


I Like You Too.

by IndigoSun



Category: The Losers (2010), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: (Is A Minor Character.), Affection, Aftercare, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bickering, Biting, Blow Jobs, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Consent, F/M, Facials, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Getting Together, Hair Washing, Happy Ending, Humor, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Interracial Relationship, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Nile's Book of Kaysanova, Nipple Play, Not Explicit Or Between Listed Characters, Overstimulation, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Praise Kink, Quynh Gets Out of the Water, Rimming, Road Trips, Semi-Public Sex, Trans Character, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:09:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 148,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25411405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoSun/pseuds/IndigoSun
Summary: Nile likes Booker, and Booker likes Nile. Neither of them are planning to tell each other, and everybody else is done with their moronic thought processes. Joe and Nicky are trying their best to coax them through it with the creeping realization that their own feelings about the two of them might be more complicated than they first thought.Of course the Losers just had to come along and throw a metaphorical car bomb into the process.(The crossover really only gets going by Chapter 4.)
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Jake Jensen, Nile Freeman/Joe Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky Nicolo di Genova/Booker Sebastien le Livre, Nile Freeman/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nile Freeman/Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova, Nile Freeman/Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Comments: 95
Kudos: 155





	1. Retail Therapy and Terrible Timing Saves The Day

Was that a thunk? Nile squinted up at the beige ceiling as she tried to recall if the noise had always been in the song, or if something was actually happening in the apartment, which was fairly unlikely. Andy had taken to soaking in hour long baths in the enormous lake that happened to be in the bathroom, and Booker generally tried to hunker down in his bedroom with his name sake. Actually, she hadn’t seen Joe or Nicky in a while-

The handle of the communal broom wobbled into sight above her face a moment later, though she only recognized it when she had already started screaming.

“Shit, I’m so sorry!” Joe’s mortified face ducked into view as his hands fluttered in embarrassment. “I was just trying to get your attention, and I didn’t want to scare you since I knew you were listening to your music.” 

“I’m fine, just a little spooked.” Nile’s undying heart pounded in her chest as she swung her feet onto the floor and smiled reassuringly at Joe. “How come you didn’t just poke me?”

“He didn’t want to be rude.” Nicky’s voice yelled from the kitchen, which was bubbling over with his usual affection that was doled out for everything from fat babies to particularly clumsy kittens. “Plus, he usually gets-”

“Stabbed.” Joe’s face wrinkled in remembrance. “A lot. So I try not to startle anybody if I can help it.”

“Andy stabbed you a bunch, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, and Mr Fuck Face did a fair bit of it too.”

“You’ve got to stop calling Booker that, sweetheart.” Nicky’s voice interrupted once more. “Don’t forget to ask Nile about the things you wanted to know.”

Nile noticed that the insulting nickname for Booker had been unusually mild for Joe’s standards, and waited for him to emerge from the raptured state he tended to sink into whenever Nicky said something sweet to him. He blinked about ten seconds later as his brain rebooted and managed to cough up the questions he had prepared.

“Right, Nicky is planning something for supper, and he wants to know if you have any food allergies.” Joe’s pen was hovering over the scrap of paper that he had brought with him.

“I used to be allergic to lima beans. But Nicky doesn’t have to plan around my allergies, I can just deal with it.” She twisted her headphones between her fingers anxiously, still uneasy with raising a fuss within the group at times.

“Nobody should swell up like a pufferfish while eating, even if they can survive it.” He recorded the new information in his neat copperplate printing. His head jerked up a moment later, and he widened his brown eyes in a show that he tended to only direct at Nicky. “I’ve also been stealing your hair products in the shower, so I’m going to buy enough replacements for the two of us. Only thing is that I’ve never got the chance to read the name of it, and Andy’s hogging the bathroom at the moment.”

“I think it’s Shea Moisture, with manuka honey and something. How come you’ve read the label on it?”

“Because Nicky really likes the smell of it.” Joe smiled. “Like, a lot.” 

The pieces connected a moment later, and Nile managed to stop from blushing at the realization. After all, Nicky and Joe did tend to shower together when they could.

“Well, your hair does look fantastic lately.”

“Aw, thank you for saying that. Is there anything else that we can grab for you while we’re in town?”

Nile’s initial response was to say no, but as she ran through a mental checklist, she remembered that she only had a day left of her birth control pills. She didn’t actually have a clue if she could actually get pregnant, or if her reproductive organs had given up the ghost when she had been killed. As sweet as Nicky and Joe were, she wasn’t going to ask them to pick up more. She also didn’t want to bother Andy more than she had to, and Booker was...well. Not a possibility.

“Do you mind if I come with? I just need to stop by a pharmacy, and swing by the thrift store that Booker found.”

Joe’s face turned acidic at the mention of the Frenchman’s name, and got even more sour when the man in question actually stuck his head out of his room.

“Actually, can I come too, because I’ve got this thing I need to pick up-”

“Fine, you can come. We’re meeting at the car in five minutes, and we’ll try to find something for you to betray on the way there. Maybe an orphaned squirrel, if we get lucky.” Joe was already on his way out of the room when there was the faint sound of a disapproving sigh, and Joe spun on his heel to glare at Booker. “Bring a coat, it’s probably going to rain.”

Nile noticed Nicky’s pleased chirp at Joe as Booker’s body heat warmed her side. Her stomach flipped at the wave of heat that crept over her as he brushed past her on the way into his room. No, she really shouldn’t get involved with any mopey white boys, even if they were really sweet with a tight little ass. Nile stared at the wall as the errant thought finished bubbling its way to the surface of her mind. Fuck, she was in trouble.

\--

“Did you remember to put the reusable bags back in the trunk?” Nicky smiled as he marched across their driveway with a copious grocery list in hand, and Nile couldn’t help but smile back as she tossed him the keys for the pale blue car.

“ I did. You want me to ride shotgun again?” Nile had been surprised the first time Nicky had quietly nudged her into the front passenger seat, but she had figured out that Nicky didn’t like to drive with his soulmate in the front seat, since Joe tended to get handsy when they weren’t busy getting shot at.

“Well, you do have the best music playlists out of the five of us.” Nicky ducked into the car, and Nile had just followed suit when Nicky gravely leveled his pale green eyes at her. “Do you have anything you want to ask before the guys get here?”

A joke about the stolen hair products was the first thing that came to mind, but Nicky’s mellow stare tended to drag the truth out of a person, whether they wanted to or not. Nile decided instead to ask about the thing she was most curious about.

“Is Joe always going to stay mad at Booker?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Nicky thoughtfully scratched his jaw. “Booker’s never fucked up this badly, but forever is really hard to sustain when you’re pissed off and stuck in close quarters.” He jerked his chin at the subjects of their conversation, who were approaching the car together while pretending the other person didn’t exist. “It doesn’t mean that I’m not going to shove those two in the back for bickering, though.”

“Does Joe know that you’re this evil?”

“No, he really doesn’t.”

Booker and Joe pulled their respective doors open, and were awkwardly finished sorting out the various sections of their seatbelts without talking asNicky started smoothly reversing down the driveway, while Nile tried to figure out what song to start with. Staying Alive tended to get laughed at, and Beyonce went down well, but she bit her lip at the next option. It was almost impossible not to sing along with it, but she really wanted to see if the three immortals could catch the pop culture reference. She decided to play it anyway.

“Well, Andy said she was murdering the next person to bring home another stupid coffee mug, so now I think we really have to-” Booker grinned at the song choice, and immediately turned his puppy dog eyes at Joe. “Can I sing too?”

“You may. Though if you mess up a note, I’ll feed you to the neighborhood foxes.” Joe said gruffly, which was downplayed by the way he was grinning with a sparkle in his eyes.

It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t their first time singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody, and they had some really excellent harmonising on the Galileos.

\---

The group hung onto the final notes of the song as long as their collective lungs could hold it, and all the tension from the last six months bled out for a few joyful seconds as everybody tried to get their breath back. Then the laughter kicked in, which was only amplified once the young mother unloading three toddlers in the parking space next to theirs gave them a startled glance. The snickering eventually died down, and Nicky approvingly patted her armn as everybody started bailing out of the car in better spirits than when they had got in it.

Once everybody got into the small thrift store, it only took moments for everybody to splinter off in search of their own interests. Nicky tended to prowl around for good quality kitchenware at cheap prices, Joe looked for art supplies, and Booker liked to do an overall skim. However, Nile had her heart set on the drop dead gorgeous jacket she had found during her last visit.

It had beautiful neon coral coloured leather, more pockets than she knew what to do with, gleaming gold zippers and was exactly her size. It was also one hundred dollars north of her budget as of last week. But now she was ready for it and she could just about feel it in her hands as she rounded the last clothing rack.

Nile hung her head as she saw that it had been sold, and told herself the despair flooding her body was stupid. What did she expect? It was a thrift store, and there was no such thing as rain checking a jacket just because she wanted it. God, she was an idiot. At least whoever bought it was paying for a good cause. She saw Booker’s back meandering down an aisle nearby, and she sternly reminded herself that there were worse things than not being able to buy a jacket.

Nile allowed herself one more sigh before listlessly starting her search through the clothing racks.

\--

“Did you see the deal on the knitting needles and the yarn?” 

Nile found it surprising that Joe was calmly talking to Booker outside the store, but she couldn’t help but also notice that he couldn’t actually force himself to say Booker’s name. Booker gave an affirming hum in response, hesitantly smiling as he hugged his bag of purchases to his chest. It could’ve been that Joe didn’t want to beralt Booker in public, though Nicky’s beaming smile suggested otherwise.

“Did you find anything you liked, Nile?”

Nicky was vibrating with excitement as he anticipated showing off his cheap prizes, and caused Nile to wonder if he had found another box of Japanese steel knives at a massive discount. She was also appreciative of the fact that Nicky’s manners were packed deep enough into his soul that he was genuinely interested in her own things before showing off his own items.

“A few things actually. I got a new pair of combat boots to replace the ones where I, you know, shot myself in my foot.” The guys nodded in remembrance, and Joe sternly waggled his boba tea at her.

“Next time, just remember to poke yourself in the forearm or something if you’re trying to prove to your point, or smack the idiot in the head until they get it.”

This brought on another round of even more sage nods, as they crowded around the hood of the car as she opened the box that contained her latest contribution to the household. It had probably started life as the base of a saccharine Easter basket, but was currently existing in the form of a violently pastel mug that a person could easily haul an entire watermelon around in with room left over. Nile thought the frolicking ducklings and bunnies painted on it were a special touch. 

“Mio Dio. It’s perfect, Nile.” Nicky had the light of rapture in his eyes while he slapped at Joe’s shoulder to make sure the other man was looking at it. “Andy’s going to hate it so much.”

“I think that it’d make a great salad bowl.” Booker was gently poking at the mug’s handle, which was as girthy as a man’s wrist. “”We even don’t even have one this big.”

“”That’s an excellent point. Nile, always use a bigger salad bowl than you think you need.” Nicky was still gleefully laughing as he elbowed Joe into showing off the mug that he had found. The cup in question was a great deal smaller than Nile’s horrific find, but it balanced out in terms of how gaudy it was. It was shaped like a stack of donuts in blindingly neon colours, which would clash beautifully with Andy’s glumness and wardrobe choices.

Nile turned with a smile as she tried to give Booker a chance to show off the things that he had found, only to find that he was already loping his way across the parking lot to their prefered grocery store. Joe started jogging after Booker while chewing the younger man out for forgetting the grocery bags. Nicky gently bumped his shoulder against hers before he started taking off as well, with the grocery list in hand.

“Come on Nile, we can watch them argue about how ripe a banana is supposed to be when you buy it.”

Nile decided to refrain from bringing up the fact Nicky also tended to get testy whenever he got close to the olive oil section.

\--

“Nicky wants to know if you can run over to the corner store and grab a loaf of garlic bread to go with supper.” 

“Really?” Nile was less suspicious of Andy asking for the favor, and instead was paranoid as hell about the actual request. “Did Nicky actually say those words, in that sequence?”

“Yeah. He said those exact words.” Andy didn’t break eye contact as she sucked at the straw sticking out of her tiki cocktail. Nile had been interested in how to make the drink, right until Andy had started going on about hard to source ingredients, and the proper technique for carving a dolphin from a banana, two cloves, and a maraschino cherry.

“It’s just hard to imagine that he said it, since he offered to get Joe to show me how to grind up pig hooves for gelatin the last time I was craving jello.”

“It happens on occasion. Just make sure that it has cheese on it.” Andy said breezily, and Nile decided to make a swift exit before anything weirder could be requested.

Nile had treated herself to a slurpee that was a deeply unnatural colour on the walk home after finding the least offensive loaf that she could find. Mercifully, there had been a shockingly fancy sourdough with what she assumed was actual garlic and what Nile assumed was mozzarella.

It was still miles better than the MRAs that she had choked down over the years, but she was too worried about falling short to actually hand deliver it to the kitchen that was audibly bursting at the seams with laughter at Andy’s ongoing battle with the kitchen appliances. The woman was a total badass, but it didn’t mean that she was getting any closer to using the microwave without accidentally blowing food up in it. Nile raised her voice enough to be heard over the chaotic scene.

“Hey guys, I dropped the garlic bread off on the coffee table and I’m just going to-”

“Daiquiri!” Joe roared at the top of his lungs, making Nile flinch from the next room over. “Andy, you’ve got to get out there and make Nile that daiquiri you were talking about!”

“...I’m good without the drink, thanks.”

Nile was still shaking her head in bewilderment when a spidery quick motion in the corner of the room caught her attention. Booker had been trying to run across to her room on the balls of his feet, and had immediately whipped around when he realized that he had been spotted. He was also hiding something behind his back with a deeply guilty look on his face. In her old life, Nile would’ve gone ahead and talked the person down until they spilled the beans, but Booker required a different touch. (Her brain came up with lewd suggestions on what kind of touches that could be.)

She smiled brightly as she crept closer, hoping Booker wouldn’t notice the way she was circling to block off some of his exits. The way he immediately tensed and started to back away meant he had already picked up on it. She had to pick up the pace.

“What’re you hiding, Booker?”

“The recycling.”

Nile was grudgingly impressed on how fast the lie ricocheted out of his mouth as she narrowed her eyes and stepped a little faster, well aware of the dysfunctional audience starting to gather behind her.

“I took it out just before we went to the store. What is it actually?”

“It’s a present for Nicky and Joe’s wedding anniversary.” Booker nodded with an obviously fake smile. “It’s their fifteen hundredth one. Very special year.”

Nile paused for a moment as she worked through the math. Joe heaved a disgruntled sigh behind her before he spoke.

“Bitch, we haven’t even been alive that long. Get him, Nile.”

All of Nile’s previous track and field experience came into play as she launched herself off the couch at her target, since she needed all the height advantage she could get if she was going to take down Booker. 

She collided with his back moments later and would’ve succeeded beautifully with the twisty little take down Andy had taught her last week if Booker hadn’t turned at the last second, and ended up with her legs wrapped around Booker’s waist and staring up at his mouth. It wasn’t really how she thought this was going to go down. No, no, she really shouldn't be thinking about going down right now.

“Will you just tell me what you have, Booker-” There was a faint sound of fabric dropping to the floor behind Booker, and Nile’s strained curiosity peaked. Really, she was just expecting that one of the guys had accidentally stuck her wool sweater in the dryer and was trying to get rid of the evidence, but no, there was the lusted over leather jacket, gold zippers and all.

Huh. 

Nile was squirming as she tried to figure out the best way to get off Booker and talk to him about it, and thought she felt something hard nudge against her ass as she was abruptly pulled up higher on his torso. Well, if that was happening, she was damn well going to hold onto his shoulders for balance and look him in the eyes before this got going.

“Did you get the jacket for me?” Her question was asked more softly than she had planned, but it also had a pretty obvious answer.

“I did.” Booker’s chest was vibrating pleasantly against hers as he spoke, and Nile noticed that his hands were cupping her ass. She could think of worse ways to be held up by him. “I knew that you wanted it, and well…” His stubbled cheek scratched lightly against her arm as Booker leaned in. Jesus, his blue eyes were intense. “We all just want you to be happy.”

“What.” Nile’s immediate thought sprang out of Andy’s mouth fully formed, and the normally calm woman was staring at Booker with a mix of indignation and irritation on her face. “Seriously, Sebastien, what the fuck does that mean? We put up with months of you going on about how Nile is the most amazing woman you’ve ever met, and the really pervy things that you’d like to do with her, and now you’re coughing up that chicken shit excuse?”

Nile squeaked when Booker tensed and she got pulled close enough to feel some really interesting parts of his anatomy. He cleared his throat in a panicked wheeze, before he managed to croak out,

“Those things were really more metaphorical in nature-”

“Not the way you were going on about it. Didn’t you used to be better than this?” Nicky was looking dismayed at the turn of events. “Joe, he wasn’t always this terrible at flirting, right?”

Joe gravely shook his head as he glanced at the kitchen. 

“No, he was always a bit awkward. Nile’s not much better, what with constantly checking out Booker’s ass and sighing about she should’ve dated guys like him.”

Nile wished she could summon enough saliva to curse at Joe for throwing her under the bus, but all she had was a dry mouth as Booker’s grip shifted from panicked to very interested. Oh fuck. There was a lot of intention packed into his stare while his eyes darkened. Her body was definitely getting affected as warmth and wetness started building up where she was pressed up against his abs in a very intimate spot. Triple fuck.

“Bonjour, Nile.” She hadn’t heard that gravelly purr come rumbling out of Booker before, and Nile really hoped that it wouldn’t be the last of it. Well, she couldn’t blame Booker for being noncommittal if she didn’t get a move on soon. Nile gently stroked her thumb across his cheekbone, not missing the way Booker tilted his head into the contact like a particularly large and dangerous house cat.

“How do you feel about kissing, Booker?”

His wolfish grin was all the warning she got before he caught her mouth in a surprising gentle kiss while one of his fingers idly stroked across the back of her leg. Nile pulled at his wide shoulders to try to bait him into deepening the kiss, but there was still a bit of resistance. Nile was sure that he was trying to give her a chance to back out of the kiss if she wanted to. Nile dug her socked heels into Booker’s back as she tried to climb higher, and he obligingly pulled her up without missing a beat.

Perfect.

Nile grinded herself against Booker’s muscled stomach in small, achingly good circles that only fanned the fire rising in her pelvis, and knew he had realized the significance of it by his throaty growl and the hands that were groping at her ass. Nile had shoved her hands under Booker’s shirt to do a little grabbing of her own when things got a lot more heated. She faintly noted Andy telling them to take it to a different room around the time Booker was pinching at her nipples through her thin bra, and she had almost managed to get both of his shirts off while biting at his throat.

“Do you want to take this elsewhere?”

Nile couldn’t help but be gleeful at how breathless her fellow immortal was, and she dropped a sucking kiss on the spot of bare skin below his ear just to make him whine before she peeled herself away to speak.

“I’d love to. Can we go to your room?”

“Mmmhm.” His hummed affirmation buzzed pleasantly against her mouth, and Nile redoubled her efforts to liberate Booker from having to wear a shirt. Sadly, at the very moment she got to see a hint of chest hair, Booker tripped on the rat’s nest of torn away clothing as he tried to carry her away.

“Merdemerdemerde!”

Booker hopped desperately on one foot while he tried to kick the ball of clothing loose and keep both of them upright and moving forward on the path to his room. 

Gravity and terrible timing won the battle a second later, and Nile barely remembered to protect her head when Booker flung her at the couch in a last ditch effort to save her from being crushed under him. She grunted as her back and hands collided with the wall above the couch, and thought she felt one of her fingers snap even as Booker crashed into the sturdily built coffee table a few feet away.

Well, fuck. Nile was hissing under her breath as she gingerly straightened out her rapidly healing finger, since she was still semi convinced it would heal crooked, even after jumping out of a skyscraper had proved her wrong. She wobbled to her feet a moment later, and noticed Joe’s concerned face as he leaned out of the kitchen doorway with an expectantly raised eyebrow.

“I’m good. It was a little accident. Booker?”

“Joe, feel free to kill me.” Booker groaned from where he had his face planted onto the rug, and seemed to be actively hoping for a black hole to open and suck him in while Nile was trying not to notice how cute he acted when he was embarrassed.

“Drama queen.” Joe vanished back into the kitchen with a dismissive flip of his apron, satisfied that they weren’t beating each other up on purpose.

Nile felt through her hair in search of possible plaster chunks while she considered her next move. She still wanted a relationship with Booker, and she also wanted to hopefully expericance some really great sex with him. A little fumble wasn’t getting in the way of that, so she briskly unclipped her bra and pulled it through her sleeve before tossing it on his upturned face.

“The last one to your room gets the last orgasm.”

Nile sprinted for his bedroom, which was conveniently much closer to her than it was to Booker. She cackled at the sound of Booker frantically trying to keep up, and was sure she had the foot race in the bag before she was grabbed by the waist and carried along as Booker threw himself at his own bed. They tumbled along together for a second or two and Nile finally found herself sitting in Booker’s lap with his solid chest pressed to her back.

“You know, I think that counts as cheating, Booker.” Their breathless giggles were still bleeding out by the time his battered t-shirt was flung over her head and to land between her spread legs. Ah. She bent forward to grab it, only to get distracted by his large hands pinning her hips in place with a string of nipping kisses being dotted up her neck.

“Possibly.” A hot hand stroked possessively across her lower stomach, leaving Nile whimpering as it ventured up her torso, leaving heat trails behind it. Nile’s back arched as his calloused skin enhanced all the electrifying sensations that he was causing, and only felt herself getting slicker as Booker hooked his chin over her shoulder to get a better view. “But you are the person who just forgave the disaster that happened, so your judgement might be off.” Nile shakily inhaled as Booker’s rough fingers petted the skin just shy of her nipple.

“P-Please touch me there.” His fingers idly swirled on her skin, and she could have cried as it moved no closer to where she wanted it.

“Good girls would tell me where they want me to touch them.” Booker’s mild tone would’ve fooled her, if not for the hard line of his trapped erection rubbing against the small of her back. Nile helplessly squirmed at his suggestion, feeling deeply depraved as she tried to wiggle her way out of the stern rule and ended up with Booker’s hand lifting away in punishment.

“Booker, please touch my tits.” Nile sobbed in relief when Booker’s hands immediately cupped her breasts and started tweaking her stiff nipples. Everything felt so much more dirty with most of her clothing being left on, and Booker’s skilled fingers feeling her chest up under her shirt was definitely adding onto it. 

“That’s my good girl.” Nile whimpered as she hid her face against the side of his neck, jolting as her nipples got tugged lightly. “Just gorgeous. Any man would have to be an idiot not to see it.” She tried to twist around just to distract Booker from drowning her in more of the praise that was just making her slicker between her legs, and shivered at the leisurely lick that revisited where he had bitten her.

His leg was twitching under her hand when she tried to push his pants down and her breasts immediately got a quick, stern squeeze before Booker kissed the shell of her ear.

“If my good girl keeps her hands to herself and behaves herself, I might just let you undo my zipper. You better be good, though.”

“I’ll be good, I swear I will.” Booker kneaded her tingling breasts a bit more gently, and Nile balled her hands in his sheets just for something to hold onto as he kept heaping on the torment.

“I’m sure you will.” Booker thoughtfully scraped his scruffy jaw across her shoulder in a shudder inducing move. “Would a good girl’s panties look that soaked if she wasn’t being a little bad, though?”

Nile harshly weeped as she realized that Booker thought that she was being bad when all she wanted was to be good for him, and she was instantly encased in a comforting hug before he looked into her eyes with a distraught expression on his face.

“Freeman, are you okay? We don’t have to keep going if it’s too much.” Nile couldn’t recall Booker ever calling her by her last name, and it instantly brought her back into her head.

“I think I’m okay, really.” Nile anxiously bit her lip over the question she wanted to ask, but she decided Booker probably wouldn’t mock her about it. “You’d still like me if I was being bad, right?”

“Nothing could keep me from liking you, Nile.” Booker wryly smiled at her. “Hell, I still like Joe, and he can be a real asshole at times.” Nile tucked her cheek against his in relief and rested her hand on his arm as he kept hugging. “I’m not crazy about people touching me below my waist when I don’t expect it. It’s nice if people check in first about it.”

Nile didn’t pry about what had happened to cause that, and was just grateful that Booker was exposing a piece of his own vulnerability after she showed him hers.

“I really liked being your good girl, you know.” Her brain abruptly threw up an urgent warning about the thing she had forgotten about and she immediately patted at Booker’s hand. “I’m on my placebo week of birth control, and I don’t have any condoms, so we can’t have any penetration.”

“Fair enough.” Booker shrugged behind her like he had never heard of a smaller issue. “Do you want to see just how good my fingers can get?”

“Yes, please.” Nile pushed her face into the spot between his neck and his shoulder as she shuddered in relief. “Do you suppose good girls would keep their panties on or off while they were getting fingered?” Booker’s jaw flexed against the top of her head in what she suspected was a grin.

“I kinda want to see just how messy you can make those panties with them still on. I’ll have to take them off of you next time just so I can get a good look at them, though.” A long, teasing finger stroked under the upper hem of her panties and Nile rolled her head to the side as Booker spoke again. 

“You can grab my legs if you need something to hold onto.” Nile tentatively placed her hands on Booker’s clothed thighs, and writhed as the pad of his index finger swiped suddenly across her aching, swollen clit. Fuuuuck. He may as well have shocked her for the electricity arcing through her body at the unexpected move, and she wasn’t sure if she could hold back if Booker kept that up. His middle finger joined in for a long, slick slide between the folds of her labia, and Nile dug her fingers into Booker’s thigh involuntarily.

“That’s my girl.” The heel of his hand rubbed against her clit as his fingers delved a little lower. “Do you have any idea how slick you are down there?”

There was a faint noise as Booker’s finger tips sunk into her pussy, and Nile couldn’t help but arch her hips against his long fingered hand. A finger swirled indulgently over her urethra in a long, slow dig, and she couldn’t keep her head from swimming as a finger teased at sinking deep into her.

It danced up her leg a moment later, and she locked her thighs around Booker’s hand in a desperate attempt to keep it where she needed it. For a man five times her age, Booker could be a fucking brat.

“You said that out loud, you know.” He sounded way too amused about what he was putting her through, and she stubbornly resisted against his jean clad knee trying to push her legs apart.

“It’s a widely acknowledged fact about how big a brat you are.” The denim fabric scraped deliciously across her throbbing clit, and her legs convulsed apart to allow Booker full access to her dripping pussy as she forgot the rest of what she was going to say. 

Two surprising wide fingers hooked deep into her pussy without warning, and her knee jerk reaction drove her further into his lap where a shaking mewl burst out of her at the feel of a very bare, and very wide head of a cock shoving along the lips of her pussy. Nile hissed helplessly at the throb of pleasure brought on by the idea of being impaled by Booker, and pressed her head back on his shoulder as she almost reached her peak.

“J-Just keep doing th-that.” Thankfully, Booker’s rough fingers kept circling on her electrified clit in the exact rhythm and pressure that she needed. His cock thrusted alongside of her pussy n a quickening tempo, and she wailed at the filthy thing that he murmured into her ear.

“Jesus, I’d love to taste you right now.”

Nile tipped over the edge a heartbeat later, and was only distantly aware of biting his shoulder to muffle her scream as she rode the waves of her orgasm. She couldn’t have pried her thighs apart if she tried, and so Booker climaxed against her in the clamp like hold of her legs.

She dreamily noted the way Booker was panting against the side of her head as he tried to recover, and was only a little cross when he started to get bossy. 

“Sweetheart, could you please let go of my shoulder?” Fair enough. Nile released her captured bit of flesh with a pleased lick at the healing wound, and drowsily turned to curl up against Booker’s sweat slicked side. Perfect, now all she needed was her well earned nap.

“Come on, I’ve got to clean you up.” Uuuugh.

“Don’t want to.” Nile grumpily wiggled her face deeper into the pillow that was being shared by Booker’s increasingly concerned face. A broad hand petted soothingly along her back, and Nile would’ve been perfectly content if he hadn't rolled out of bed as soon as she was distracted. Jesus, he wasn’t going to give up. She spread her legs apart with an ill tempered grumble as she finally figured out where Booker was hellbent on wiping with a clean handkerchief.

“You’ve got two minutes, or you get none of the pillows.” Nile was mostly asleep by the time he finished dabbing his own semen out of her vagina and replacing her soiled underwear with a clean pair of his own, but rallied enough to clear him enough space to curl up behind her back. “I like you too, Sebastien.”

A scratchy kiss between her shoulder blades was the last thing she felt as she fell asleep. At least his feet weren’t cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely had to stick that Wayne's World reference in there, since I really wanted to see a car load of dumbasses (Plus Nicky) singing Queen. Overly complicated cocktails and how to make them is currantly one of Andy's coping mechanisms. Daiquiri was the code word the group came up with to warn Booker Nile was back.
> 
> Please favourite and comment if you liked this, and I'll be working on Booker's POV in the next work.


	2. Worst Road Trip Ever.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so things were going great with Nile. Right until the emotional shit hit the fan and now Booker is stuck driving across the country with Joe. Who is acting... different than usual.

Jesus Christ, Nile’s feet were ice blocks. Teeny tiny, beautifully formed ice blocks, but ice blocks nonetheless. But Booker hadn’t survived his marriage to Simone without learning that you don’t tell the gorgeous woman who just had mind blowing sex with you that you thought you were going to get frostbite from having skin contact with their feet. Not that he had too many chances to have said that, seeing how this was the first time in a century that he had actually sex with somebody.

He successfully stopped himself from wincing as Nile moved her feet to a spot between his calves that hadn’t lost feeling yet. It was fine. She was bound to warm up eventually, and his arm hadn’t even started going numb from where she was lying on it. This was going to be the best day ever.

\--

Somebody was frantically knocking on his bedroom door. Booker was already scrabbling from his bed before he fully registered the noise, with his brain already on fire with panic and his heart lodged in his throat. Andy was dead, Nicky was dead, ohgodJoewasdead-

“Breathe for me, Sebastien.” 

Booker wasn’t sure how he ended up flat on his back with Joe straddling his thighs, but he was already sure that he wouldn’t be able to stop the way that he shuddering like a half dead horse, or making the terrible keening noise that felt like it was being ripped from his chest. He rolled his bulging eyes up to his oldest friend and newest enemy, praying against all logic that Joe would be merciful and put him out of his misery.

He could just make out Joe shaking his head at something on the bed through the blinding haze covering his eyes, and whatever noises Joe was making with his mouth was totally lost, due to the high pitched ringing in his ears. Joe gently tapped on his cheek and made hugely exaggerated mouth movements as he presumably asked him a question. He was sure anything would be better than this hell that he was trapped in. Booker shakily nodded as he threw his trust into Joe, hoping with all his might that the other man wasn’t feeling sadistic enough to keep him hovering in this agony. 

Joe tenderly cupped his head in his hands as he started hunching over Booker’s face, and Booker felt a bewildering mix of deja vu and confusion. He felt certain that he had simultaneously both been, and never had been in this scenario before, and his feverish brain finally realized that he had indeed been there as Nicky’s perspective in dreams that they all shared when they seperated. Which was really odd, since the follow up move in this scenario was almost always Joe-

Booker made a small, shocked sound as Joe locked lips with him. He blindly obeyed Joe’s guidance in tilting his head just the right way to avoid bumping their noses together, and got first hand experience on how Joe usually kissed Nicky on the average Tuesday. Which turned out to be the world shattering, laden with expertise, couldn’t survive without their tongues in each other's mouth type of kiss. Booker’s ears abruptly stopped ringing around the same time that he discovered that he already had his tongue halfway down Joe’s throat with his arms trapping the other man in place. Booker cautiously let go of him, shock already starting to fizz in his nerves.

“That’s how you stop a panic attack, Habibi!”

Booker couldn’t bring himself to do anything but helplessly blink up at Joe’s triumphant grin as he tried to get both his brain and his ripped vocal cords back in order.

“I’m not sure if that’s the prescribed method for dealing with that, Joe.” A trickle of bitter panic slid up his throat. “Is Andy still alive?”

“We all are, babe.”

Booker jerked his head towards Nile’s soft spoken words, and he felt humiliation and fear seeth inside him at the realization that his new lover had finally witnessed one of the panic attacks that had plagued him ever since the horrific month that he always tried and failed to forget. His chest and ribs were starting to clench in anxiety when Joe clambered off of his lap and easily pulled him to his feet in one fell swoop.

“Nile, I’m just going to bring him to Nicky, and I’ll come right back to give you a hand with your hair.” Joe swung Booker up into his arms before he could protest, and Booker found he still had a grain of self awareness of how silly he looked with Joe dragging him around in a bridal carry. He gave in with a sigh as he dropped his head onto Joe’s shoulder, with his dangling legs swaying slightly as Joe smoothly carried him back to his and Nicky’s bedroom.

“I wish she hadn’t seen that.” He could feel Joe’s heart steadily thumping against his side as he strolled down the dimly lit hallway, and he could almost hear the cogs whirling in Joe’s brain as he tried to come up with a well thought out response to Booker’s confession.

“It isn’t your fault that it happens, and any person who would think less of you for that isn’t worthy of you.” Joe cursed quietly as he accidently kicked his door as he tried to get into his room. “Nicolo?”

“Mmrrph?” Nicky’s cat-like noise came from the bed, and Booker could just barely spot one of his green eyes gleaming inquisitively from the blanket heap. 

“We need you to squish the cat. You up for it?”

“I might fall asleep during the squishing. Will you wake me up when I need to leave?”

“I will. Sleep well, sweetheart.”

Booker warily peeled off his stained jeans, as he couldn’t bring himself to inflict them on Nicky. Joe softly padded back out of the room, leaving Nicky peeling blankets aside so that Booker actually had a spot to lie down. Nicky muffled a yawn on the back of his hand as he sleepily stared at Booker’s quivering body.

“Is it okay if I touch your ass?”

Huh. Not the question he had been expecting.

“After everything that just happened, I really doubt that you can make it any worse, so feel free.” Booker tensed as Nicky straddled the small of his back, and forcibly tried to relax. His team wouldn’t hurt him that way, no matter how much he provoked them. “Though if Andy so much as looks at my crotch, I might just lose it.”

“What happened?” Nicky was drowsily fluffing Booker’s appointed pillow into a better shape for him to be lying face down on.

“I had sex with Nile, napped, had one of my panic attacks, and then Joe kissed me.” Booker could feel Nicky’s lower legs wrapping around his own to pin them in place. “Then he slipped his tongue into me, and I tongued him back. Sorry about that.”

“Hmm.” Nicky was frozen above him as he twitched his legs in consideration of what Booker just said. “Do you mean that you two French kissed?”

Booker hid his smug smile in his pillow as he mildly asked,

“Is that the term for it? You know how those pesky new fangled sex phrases slip by me sometimes.”

“Brat cat.” Nicky plastered his full body against Booker’s back while looping his arms around Booker’s chest to pin his arms to his sides as he dropped all of his weight on him, effectively drowning him in comforting, warm pressure.

Booker could already feel his eyelids starting to flicker, but there was one question he still had to ask.

“What’s with the half empty glasses of water on the floor?”

“Joe likes to say that they’re a symbol of the oasis of love I am for him in life, and that they also double as a security measure.” Nicky tiredly wiggled his face into the back of Booker’s shoulder. “Of course, the real reason is that he’s a forgetful little shit that can’t remember to take them back to the kitchen. Now go to sleep.”

\--

Booker slept deeply, with only white static filling his dreams. A part of him foggily noticed a weight lifting from his back with an affectionate touch, and he slept more restlessly for a while before a different, yet still familiar weight sprawled partly across his body. They smelled like home. What felt like minutes passed, and the weight left again, and he found himself restless again, but only in the best of ways this time. 

He was dreaming about Nile’s silky brown skin and the delicious way that she had broken apart in his arms. He rutted against the bed in long, lazy strokes, happily finding himself in the moment where he had salivated at the thought of getting his mouth between her legs. Booker had only started dreaming of what her sex might taste like when his mind was blown wide with somebody else’s gleeful sense of triumph and the image of a horrifically taxidermied armadillo purse.

“Fucking hell!”

Booker could just barely hear Joe’s demented cackle somewhere in the apartment as he reponsded to Booker’s startled yowl. He vigorously shook his head as he spilled himself out of Nicky and Joe’s bed while blearily trying to avoid stepping on the scattered glassware, already starting to strategize on who he was going to complain about the egregious interruption to.

\--

“What do you mean everybody’s gone for the next two weeks?”

“Exactly what I said, jackass.” Joe was flipping pancakes at the stove, and seemed utterly unimpressed with Booker’s shock and dismay. “You could’ve gone on the trip, but you said no ages ago. Get started on the coffee, would you?”

“I feel like I would’ve definitely remembered plans to take Nile down to the Miami cache and find her a bladed weapon to work with.” Booker hastily started breaking up the coffee beans with Nicky’s fancy hand cranked coffee grinder, but absolutely nobody could make him be happy about doing it.

“You said, and this is a direct quote,” Joe was swinging his spatula through the air for punctuation, “‘I will spin in my final grave before I have to get on another unnecessary flight at three in the morning.’”

Shit, that did sound like something he would say.

“I just wish I could’ve spent more time with Nile before she left.” 

Joe gave him a semi-sympathetic look as he tactfully ignored all of the words Booker was avoiding saying before he turned back to the frying pan. 

“We should probably just use the French press. Instead of...that.” Joe hooked his thumb over his shoulder at the contraption of glass globes, metal rods and what Booker could hesitantly identify as a butane burner.

Nicky still alleged that it was a device designed for making coffee, but Booker would sooner use the Five Cup Yama Glass Top with Ceramic Base Coffee Siphon (The instruction manual had been carefully taped to the inside of the coffee cupboard drawer, which was the only reason any of them could actually remember what it was called.) for a plant pot, or maybe trying to find the alchemical concoction for turning lead into gold. He would’ve been completely positive that Nicky had just bought it to fuck with them, if only the damn thing didn’t make delicious coffee on occasion.

Needless to say, the entire group tended to give it a wide berth at all times. Booker edged in next to Joe to get the kettle on the burner, and instinctively twisted his head to snatch the small pancake Joe threw at him out of the air with his teeth and happily started chewing.

“Lemon zest?” Joe hummed in confirmation. “Plain yogurt- no, ricotta?”

“Quark cheese.” Joe smugly smirked at Booker’s incorrect guess at the ingredient in the pancake. “What did you dream of that made you yell?”

“Nicky found a contender for the Oddball. Pretty sure that it was a purse made out of a taxidermied armadillo.” 

The Oddball had been created for the simple purpose of entertaining the group in the endless layovers they had to suffer through in airports across the globe, and had a very simple set of rules and an equally simple prize. All you had to do was find the oddest, ugliest, or simply most bizarre object in the airport’s public lost and found, present it to the others, and argue your case on why it was clearly the Oddball. If your opponents were swayed, you didn’t have to find or buy a single meal for yourself for the next twenty four hours. The competition frequently got heated.

“That’s a pretty decent find. Which airport was it?”

“Austin, if I had to guess.” 

Joe hissed through his teeth, which Booker understood instantly. Texan airports in general were stiff competition, and bizarre taxidermy wasn’t the automatic win that it was in other places. Hell, Booker had once scraped by in one desolate airport and won with a pair of chartreuse coloured reading glasses.

“I guess we’ll find out who won eventually. I just hope it won’t be another laser mouse.”

Andy had previously won the Oddball two years with a taxidermied lab mouse mounted onto a USB flash drive. Its little red eyes lit up once it was plugged in, and she had kept it around out of pure spite when they started demanding that she get rid of it. Booker shuddered at the memory, and privately resolved to get through the next two weeks with a minimum amount of arguing with Joe.

The relative peace and quiet lasted two days.

\--

“If you drip one more spot of grease on the coach, you’re buying three more of them.” 

Booker rolled his eyes at Joe’s selective fussiness in home maintenance, and kept steadily working the overly greasy slice of pepperoni pizza into his mouth with his teeth alone. After all, he needed his hands free if he was going to slap seven shades of snot out of Joe’s Kirby. He proudly huffed as his on screen uppercut connected, and tried to work the straw sticking out of his non-alcoholic beer into his mouth without throwing off the pace of his chewing.

Sure he was being a bit disgusting, but there was absolutely nobody around for Joe to blab about it to. His phone started vibrating across the crowded coffee table the moment beer had started flowing into his mouth, and Booker started repeatedly kicking Joe in the knee while furiously snorting at him to answer the damn call and put it on speaker phone.

Joe abandoned his video game controller with ill grace, and accepted the call from Andy.

“Hi Andy, Booker is currently drowning in his own filth at the moment. Anything I can help with?”

“I need you and Booker to drive down to Miami, and bring the last forty years worth of American Intelligence Agencies information that you have. Booker, you’re going to have to bring your best sniper rifle.” Andy’s amused voice paused for a moment. “It’s not a very big emergency. How soon can you two get here?”

“It’sinLasVegas-”

“My things are in Boston-”

Booker was struggling not to choke to death on a hastily swallowed chunk of pizza after he managed to garble out where exactly his massively expensive rifle had been relocated to, and was grudgingly impressed at Joe managing to interpret his spit filled hiss on long the drive would probably take, dislodge the pizza with a swift smack to Booker’s back, and answer Andy without snarking about it being three in the morning.

“Booker figures that it’ll probably take a week. Give my love to Nicky and Nile.” Joe was already pushing off the coach with a hand braced on Booker’s shoulder before he stalked off to his bedroom. “Try not to give yourself an aneurysm from trying to blink or something, Booker.”

Booker smothered an exasperated comeback in the palms of his hands. The next week was going to be hard enough without telling Joe where he could shove it in several languages.

\--

“Did you remember the passports?” 

“Yes, for the final fucking time.” Booker’s patience had been severely worn down over the past four hours, which had been filled almost entirely with Joe’s nagging. They were also only five minutes drive from the Canadian-American border, and Booker didn’t particularly want to try and smuggle Joe’s corpse across it. “Congratulations, you’re my brother in law once again, and we’re meeting your darling husband in a very vague location in North Dakota.”

“You’re gonna break your teeth if you keep clenching your jaw like that.”

Booker breathed out slowly through his nose, because he knew that if he looked over where Joe was steadily plowing through his bag of candy with his feet up on the dashboard he might just lose his mind. He was fine. This was great. 

They had only passed the border by a mile or two when Joe shifted the candy bag to the point that Booker could glance over and properly read the label of whatever Joe had been tossing back for the past hour. The car momentarily jerked to the side before he recovered enough to start drowning Joe in the angriest, most insulting words that the French language had to offer, with just enough Arabic tossed in to really demonstrate his true feelings. Joe looked infuriatingly smug at the show of Booker’s temper being let loose, and waited for a pause in the yelling to innocently shake his bag at the incandescent Frenchman.

“You want a Liquorice Allsorts?”

“I will set you on fire, and I’m going to use that shit as the fuel.” Booker breathed heavily as he refocused on the road, already feeling a bit better. “You, and everybody around you, knows that those candies will make your hairy ass smell like a Goddamn plague pit. Actually, worse than that, considering how many times I’ve woken up in one.”

“You deserve it. Plus, you don’t get to say a fucking thing about my ass, considering you were trying to beat the one eyed bishop in my bed the other morning before you got interupted.”

Booker frowned in confusion, before putting the pieces together and settling back in his seat with a smile.

“Man, Nicky must hate that euphemism. Firing off some knuckle children is a much better one.”

“He really, really does.” Joe drummed his fingers against his leg in thought before speaking again. “Hand to gland combat.”

“Good one. Greeting Master Palm and his five sons. Or squeezing the cream filled tenderloin, if you happen to be a degenerate.”

“Wax on, whack off. Calling down for more mayo. Taking part in population control.”

“I hate to tell you, but you and Nicky have been participating in that for a while.” Booker thought for a moment, before firing the shot that would take down Joe’s battle ship. “Battling the purple-headed yogurt slinger.” He grinned at Joe’s groan of defeat, and basked in the glory of winning their little game until a text alert from Andy lit up Joe’s phone.

“Andy said helping put Mr. Kleenex’s children through college.”

Booker groaned in despair, fully aware Andy had successfully usurped his crown without even being in the same state.

\--

“You are not sleeping back here with me.” Booker curled himself under the insufficient sleeping bag, where he was already feeling a bit cramped even without the older man trying to wedge his shoulders between the AMC Pacer’s front seats. “I’ve driven twelve straight hours today, I’ve eaten nothing but fast food since we got out of Vancouver, and we’re camping out in a Walmart parking lot in the middle of nowhere. Plus, I’m two inches taller than you, I need the room.”

“It’s the middle of October in Indiana. I will make us fit.” Joe leaned forward with his teeth bared, which were already chattering a bit in the cold. “Roll. Over.”

“Get bent.”

Joe dove snarling through the gap, and the wrestling match that followed almost equaled the vicious fights Booker used to have with his brothers in the streets of Paris, which had also involved scratching, biting and disparaging insults about each other’s mothers.

“You should’ve been strangled in the fucking womb!” 

Booker hissed at the insult Joe was growling into his ear, and made sure he clamped his teeth around Joe’s tender ear when he was forced to roll over and straddle Joe’s stomach, but not without landing a deliberate blow to a very vulnerable part of Joe’s anatomy. 

“You’re crushing my balls, you little shit!”

“I hope they fucking rupture!” Booker angrily slapped the back window of the car when he spotted a gawking teenage boy peering in at them, not feeling inclined for social niceties after the day that he had just gone through. “Does any of this look sexy to you? No! Keep it moving, kid.” The boy scrambled away with a yelp.

Their harsh breathing filled the silence for a few long moments before Nicky’s disembodied voice dryly spoke up from where they must have accidentally butt dialed him.

“Well, I’ve certainly heard less attractive things than that. So glad you two have been getting along in our absence.”

Booker couldn’t help but cringe a little out of guilt, well aware that Nicky, Andy, and Nile were likely pulling long hours in Miami, and he was bitching about having to share the back of an admittedly tiny car with somebody he couldn’t even bring himself to dislike. 

“I miss you two. Try to drive safely.” There was a brief pause before Nicky spoke again, this time in a happier tone. “Nile really loves that leather jacket you got her, Booker. Good night, guys.” Nicky hung up.

“I can sleep in the front if you want me to.” Booker glanced down at Joe’s contrite face, and made his decision. He twisted to press his chest against the front of the back seats, and wedged himself into the little notch that Joe had freed up, since his ass wasn’t going to be the one dangling out over the gap.

“No, it’s fine. You may as well be the big spoon, if you want to.” He patiently waited until Joe sorted out where his hands were supposed to rest before speaking again. “Try not to drool on the back of my neck, it’s itchy when it dries.”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

\--

“You left your gun with a... professional dominatrix, for reasons you won’t disclose. Who just happens to be based out of Las Vegas.” Joe’s voice was staying remarkably steady as he tried to flesh out why exactly their trip to Nevada wasn’t going to be as straightforward as Booker had hoped it would be. “Which is where the largest BDSM convention in North America happens to be this weekend. Which is why Ivy-”

“Her name is actually Iris.”

“Thank you, Iris, only has the chance to give you back your gun at the convention. Did I get all of that right?” Joe groaned when Booker nodded. “Why would you even be associating with a dominatrix, Sebastien?”

“Iris happens to be both a human, and a licensed therapist.” Booker was glumly staring at the shining Las Vegas strip as Joe circled the out laying streets for the sixth time in search of a parking spot. “You guys kept telling me that I had to try to talk to somebody. Iris is somebody.”

Joe sighed through his nose as he spotted a free spot and pulled the car into it.

“I could run in, find her, and you could just hang out in the car until I get back. Then we could find somewhere that would sell us limitless steak for five dollars and an actual bed to sleep in before we take off for Boston.” Joe softly offered.

“She won’t just give my gun to a stranger, Joe. Besides, she already sent me two guest access passes so we could get in easily.” Booker opened his car door and swung himself onto the sidewalk with all the enthusiasm of a man heading to the gallows. “I’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen, anyway?”

\--

“That one’s pretty.” Booker paused for a moment in front of the glittering jewelry display table, as he spotted the thin metal chokers that had a gap presumably designed to show off a person’s clavicles and the front of their neck. He jerked a little in surprise when Joe didn’t tug at him with the hand that Joe had been resting on the small of his back since they entered the convention, and instead trailed back to take another look at the collar that had caught Booker’s eye.

“It’s got very nice detail work.” Joe’s former merchant past was obviously coming back to him as he peered over the wares, still kneading lightly at Booker’s back as he visibly considered something. “So, which one do you want, darling?” Booker glared at Joe, not because of the pet name, since they were trying to blend in, but because Joe was obviously being an idiot.

“That gold collar alone costs five thousand dollars, my love. You shouldn’t waste your money on me.” 

“You’re right, gold would suit your colouring the best, my pretty pet.” Joe was already digging in his pocket for his wallet while he flashed a dazzling smile at the beaming latex clad woman manning the booth. “I’ve been trying to teach him that he deserves nice things, but you know how that goes.”

“I can knock two hundred off the price for you two.” The woman was already ferreting around under the bullet proof glass for one of the collars before she popped up with it in hand. “I think this one will fit him the best, but I’d be happy to do an exchange if it turns out to be the wrong size.”

“Wonderful. I don’t suppose you have a box to put it in afterwards?” Joe’s fingers were a blur as he fed his information into the debit machine, just slowly enough that Booker could notice that he was paying the full price for it. Shit. Booker resigned himself to his fate and made the required thankful noises as Joe finished the sale while chit chatting.

“Come here baby, we’ve got to get this on you.” Booker tried to make sure his smile didn’t look too forced as he tipped his head back to let Joe slide the collar around his neck before thoughtfully rotating his head after Joe diligently made sure his hair wasn’t trapped under the metal. It didn’t pinch, and it wasn’t so loose that it felt like it was going to fall off. He caught a glimpse of himself in the large mirrored backdrop of the booth and couldn’t but look for a stunned second or two before moving away.

“Thank you again for the present.” Booker lightly bumped his shoulder against Joe’s before tugging at his arm. “We’ve got to keep looking for Iris.”

They passed the next half hour in relative silence as they kept looking for a specific dominatrix in a veritable sea of them while Joe not so subtly steered Booker around the booths showcasing items that might set him off. It was the sixth abrupt turn in as many minutes that ended up with Joe pointing him directly at a small hill built out of the most creative dildos that Booker had seen in two centuries that finally made him break out in badly suppressed laughter.

“No, no, I’m fine.” Booker couldn’t help but cackle harder at the concerned look on Joe’s face. “I just find it funny that I’m so fucked up that you thought parking me in front of the stall filled with sparkly, true to life horse cock sex toys was the safest option.” Joe gave the stall a quick, startled look before grinning himself.

“The rainbow one reminds me of my last war horse, actually. Do you want to know what his name was?” Booker shook his head while hissing with laughter. “Sparcules. Actually, his real name was Jupiter, because he also had rings around there.”

“Jesus, you’re awful. Go find me a vending machine that will sell you water or something.”

“After all these years of wondering, I finally know what makes you thirsty, dear!”

Booker smiled as he waved Joe down the relatively quiet hallway in search of a machine willing to play ball with him. He waited for a minute or two before pulling out his phone to see if Nile had texted him, though it was anybody’s guess what her number would be with a burner phone. He didn’t get a chance to go any further than the opening screen when an invasive hand grabbed his ass. 

“Get the fuck off of me, asshole-” Booker abruptly froze as he felt cold, sharp steel slide under his shirt and press warningly against the thin skin of his stomach while a male voice purred in his ear.

“You really shouldn’t be bitchy to me right now. But when you have such a little tight ass like that, a person really should expect it. But look, here comes your boyfriend now.”

Booker slowly raised his eyes to see that Joe had also frozen in place on his trip back down the hallway, his fist clenched around the dripping water bottle like he was thinking about braining Booker’s attacker with it.

“If you make a fuss, I’m going to disembowel your boyfriend before I carve out his tongue.” Booker’s mouth flooded with the remembered taste of copper as time slowed to a drip around him, and he frowned as cheerful humming broke through the static building in his head. Its source was revealed a moment later as the young girl he had seen earlier in the convention flounced out of the woman’s bathroom between him and Joe. She really had a lot to flounce with, since she was currently decked out in a black and blue eighteenth century royal French court dress, with a very large model ship woven into her powdered wig. It brought back a lot of memories for Booker. 

She bounced on her toes out of sheer joy as she barely glanced in Booker’s direction before she tapped on her phone while cheerfully calling out to somebody over Booker’s shoulder.

“Anna, you’ve got to see the totally hideous giraffe print wallpaper in the bathroom. You’re going to lose your mind when you see it.” Booker twitched as her youthful, elfin face turned back to him with an ecstatic grin. 

“Dude, your collar is so effing pretty.” Booker mentally screamed at her to get the fuck away from him as she giddily skipped down the hallway towards him with a huge, flirtaous wink. “I’ve got to get a selfie with you, but you’re going to have to lean back to fit in the frame, like really, really lean back.” Booker finally noticed that her bright, serious eyes didn’t match up with her gleeful smile as she picked up speed.

He hurled himself backwards as she threw her whole weight into colliding with the knee of the man holding him with both of her feet, and the man’s knife caught only the fabric of Booker’s shirt when the girl instantly grabbed the man, twisted, and hurled him over her back in an obviously well practiced move as she used up the rest of her momentum. Booker was pushing himself up from the ground when a flurry of tangerine and cream fabric sprinted past him to tackle the man who was starting to wobble to his feet.

“Do you feel that awful pain in your knee? Because that’s what it feels like when the bones in your knee cap gets shattered.” The other woman was dressed in a matching outfit to the girl in blue, and her dark eyes were as blank as a shark’s while she pinned the man to the ground with his knife wielding arm wrenched back into a position that Booker really didn’t envy. “If you don’t drop the knife, I am going to turn your arm into a tube sock filled with bone shards. You really won’t like that.”

She really did look like what Booker imagined Joe’s sisters must have looked like while she calmly waited for the man to drop his weapon, her eyes only moving to make sure that her girlfriend was out of range. The man angrily twisted and writhed underneath her before viciously hissing,

“Fuck you, I’m not dropping anything.”

“I’m glad you said that, because I’m going to really enjoy this next part.”

Booker couldn’t track what exactly she did next, but there was indeed the sound of snapping bones just before the man started shrieking in an awful, agony filled pitch that Booker had only ever heard on battlefields filled with dying men. His knife dropped to the ground.

“Sam, get me some handcuffs before the cops get here.” The woman’s voice was deliberately mild while she glanced up to watch the crowd gathering around them, before jerking her lips into a tense smile at Booker and Joe as she reached into a hidden pocket to pull something out. A set of numbered room keys were lobbed into Booker’s numb hands as she calmly spoke again. “Get up to our room and use whatever you need. We’ll clear up everything down here.”

The woman was apparently convincing enough in her demonstrated abilities to keep beating the shit out of Booker’s would-be murderer that Joe apparently felt secure enough to leave them to it. Booker’s mind was filled with enough distracting static that Joe’s first yank on his waist only made him flinch as the crowd thickened around their little group. 

“Sebastien, we’ll be safe up in the room, but we have to move now.” Booker blinked as Joe’s calloused fingers twined with his own, and managed to follow him as Joe towed him in the quickest, most direct route to the nearest elevator before shoving him into it. Booker’s eyes drifted up to blankly stare up at the elevator ceiling, and faintly felt his mind break loose from his body. 

Joe kept saying something to him, but he couldn’t force himself to focus on any of the words, or what they meant when they were strung together. What did Iris say this was? Dissociation, he distantly thought, or maybe shock. Whatever this was, he would take it over his body deciding to rebel against him. Booker guessed it said something distinctive about him that he could plow through battlefields without batting an eye, but anything traumatically sexual or related to family seemed to keep kicking his ass in the form of panic attacks. 

Ah, look at that, his mouth was saying words out loud with his brain still thoughtlessly swimming around. He couldn’t properly identify whatever expression Joe was making with his face in response, but it didn’t look very comfortable. Booker watched as his body was pulled into a tight, tense embrace, and decided it wouldn’t be so bad if he could just stay right where his mind had drifted off to.

Of course, his fucking brain decided to get back together with his body the very moment the elavator doors pinged open. His mouth flooded with vile tasting saliva, and he instantly recognized the pressure in his throat as a clue to him vomiting in the very, very near future. Booker was just twitching his head towards Joe to clue him in on the vital information when two middle aged women walked into the elevator in a cloud of sickly sweet perfume, which invaded every inch of the tiny space. His stomach roiled uncontrollably at the awful scent, and he had to clench his jaw with his mouth pressed tightly shut just not to hurl at first contact with the smell. 

“Booker? Are you okay?” Booker squeezed his eyes shut in concentration, because if he so much as fucking twitched, somebody was going to get vomited on. “You’re looking a bit grey.” Jesus, Joe, shut the fuck up.

He was not throwing up on the ladies. He was not throwing up on the ladies. 

The elevator dinged again, but was obviously not at their floor, since he was still trapped.

Something round and stiff was pressed into his hands, and Booker managed to summon enough self control to quickly peek at what Joe had given him. Which was Joe’s favourite baseball hat, turned upside down. He was wrong, Joe was obviously the greatest person on the planet, if he was volunteering treasured clothing to be vomited into.

Booker tersely nodded in thanks, which was the absolute limit of physical movement that he was willing to risk. The waves of scorching heat were drowning him as sweat flowed over his skin, and he shuddered in gratitude as Joe silently pressed the still frigid water bottle to the back of his neck. The elevator dinged once again, and he hiccuped wetly as Joe tugged on his elbow to get him to move. He didn’t miss the way that Joe made sure that he was directly between Booker and the chattering women as he made his wobbly exit, and sagged a little out of relief when they stepped into an empty hallway with slick hardwood floors.

“We’re almost there, I just have to find the damn room-” Booker gagged as Joe triumphantly threw open the right door and shoved him into the absolutely worst room they could’ve been in at the moment. He whimpered at the sight of clearly expensive silky clothing covering nearly every horizontal surface, and immediately regretted making that noise as his stomach contents surged upwards. Joe ripped something off the bed in a blur of movement as he shoved Booker into the chair with the least amount of clothing on it before pushing an empty ice bucket under Booker’s chin.

Thankfully, he only noticed the vaguest of details as time slipped by under his feet. Joe pulled off Booker’s soiled shirt before giving him a wipe down with a wet face cloth. Having something sweet smelling and warm being pulled down over his shivering torso. Gargling obediently with mint flavoured mouthwash before being pulled into bed.

“I miss my mother.” Booker whispered into Joe’s chest, too exhausted to raise his voice any higher or pretend that he wasn’t feeling this way as he clung to him. Joe’s hand paused for a second before he resumed petting Booker’s head and back in long, gentle strokes. “Can you get them on the phone? I don’t want to talk, I just need to... hear that everybody’s okay.”

Joe stretched to reach his phone, and he quietly explained Booker’s request once somebody picked up. Booker burrowed in closer to Joe as Andy started talking about the friendly French bulldog that lived next to their temporary apartment, and how she had taken to making sure that she always had a dog treat on her in case she saw him. Nile sleepily gossiped about the tawdry drama going on in the office that she was working undercover in, and Booker slipped a little closer to sleep.

His eyelids slipped shut as Nicky started talking about how he had been googling how to fix the busted printer in Nile’s office, since he hadn’t been able to read the entirety of the troubleshooting page through the rifle scope. Booker fell asleep with a sigh, content that even though he was completely fucked up, the rest of his family was fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Points to whoever spots the references. Joe was totally correct, Booker is a bit of a drama queen, but he's the group's drama queen, God damn it. I'll be writing the next chapter from Joe's POV.
> 
> Thank you all for the lovely comments, and please comment if you liked it!


	3. That Foot In Mouth Moment Could Turn Into Cock In Mouth Very Quickly.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe was doing pretty well at taking care of Booker until unexpected information turns up in the form of a stranger. Well, that and blurting out what he and Nicolo actually thought about Booker and Nile. Oops.

“Did Booker fall asleep yet?”

“I’m pretty sure that he did.” Joe was still stroking the back of Booker’s neck, making sure that the younger man had actually fallen asleep, if the way that he had gone totally limp across most of Joe’s body hadn’t been a good enough indicator. The boy could sleep like the truly dead if he had a companion to sprawl out against. “Tonight went really badly.” Joe scrubbed a knuckle across his eye while he tried to figure out how to explain the night’s events to Nicky.

It should’ve been easier to tell him than it was, since Nicky had been informed about why they were in Las Vegas to start with, and he was no stranger to the layers of traumas and quirks that wrapped around the core of Booker.

“So we’re in the convention, and everything’s going pretty well. You know, making sure he didn’t get a decent look at any of the really pointy things, or the ropes, so he wouldn’t get freaked out by them.” Nicky hummed into his ear encouragingly, making Joe close his eyes and wish that he was right there with them. “I left for two minutes to get him a drink, and some guy sexually assaulted him before threatening to kill him. I’m still not sure if Booker was deliberately targeted or not.”

“Where’s the man now?” Nicolo’s voice had gone lethally flat, and Joe shakily smiled as he could almost hear Nicky’s mind trying to work out how to murder Booker’s attacker from the other side of the country. He was sure that Nicky could pull it off if he was given enough time to think about it. His black mamba.

“He’s probably in the hospital by now, because his arm was really fucked up when I saw him last.” Joe froze as Booker quietly whined against his ribcage. Shit, it didn’t look like he was going to sleep nearly as peacefully as he had yesterday. “I didn’t get a chance to even get near the guy.”

“Who hurt him, then?”

“Two women dressed in really old French clothing did. One was just like a blood thirsty kitten shoved into a powdered wig, and she got to Booker first..”

“What about the other woman?”

“She turned the guy’s arm into a tube sock filled with bone shards.” After all, it had turned out to be a pretty apt description, and Joe believed in giving artistic credit where it was due. “She was...different from the other one. She had shark eyes, you know?”

He could hear Nicky audibly relaxing at the description of her. People with those cold, blank eyes didn’t tend to be the cuddliest, but they were usually very efficient and thorough when it came to the minutiae of violence.

“Booker had one of his catatonic moments in the elevator, and then he got sick in the hotel room.” Which was bad, but not as awful as it could’ve been.

“Fuck. When did you get a chance to rent a room?”

“I didn’t.” Joe gave the small room another look over, and found that he was still a bit shocked about how much clothing and toiletries the women had managed to pack into it. “The women gave us their room for the night.”

“Huh.” Strangers didn’t often offer them help, let alone to this extent. “What does the hotel room look like?”

“It’s a lot like if a Lush shop exploded in Marie Antonette’s closet. Cute in a frilly sort of way.” Joe tested the dangerous waters of trying to squirm out from under Booker’s clinging grip. His fingers immediately clamped down on Joe’s back, unwilling to let go even in the middle of sleep. Fuck. He wouldn’t have wanted to air his next concerns if Booker had been in a separate room, let alone plastered against him.

“Were you thinking about what happened to Booker?” 

The tidal wave of remembered terror and pain washed over him and Joe could only frantically cling to Booker until the memory faded. He still had occasional nightmares just from the second hand experience of it, and frequently woke with the taste of filthy dirt and blood in his mouth. Poor Sebastien.

“I can’t forget the way that he had to claw his way out of that landfill after going through...” Joe’s voice wobbled and cracked mid-sentence, still unable to talk about the mutilations and sexual brutalities that Booker had been subjected to, even if it had happened sixty years ago. 

“-That. All by himself.” Tears rolled down his face as he bit his own arm to stifle any noises that might wake Booker before he managed to croak out, “He could’ve been taken again, when I wasn’t even paying fucking attention. What if that ever happened to Nile? Or any of us? You know that Andy wouldn’t be able to make it through it again, especially now.”

“It’s okay, Habibi, we’ve got him now.” His sweet Nicolo’s voice had gone hollow and hoarse, and Joe knew that he wasn’t the only one crying. “Just stick close to him until we can see him again. Run him baths. Start one of your petty arguments with him. Just make sure that he knows you won’t leave him.”

“I will.” Joe sniffed while he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, trying desperately to lighten the mood a little. “Should I start giving out the sympathy blowjobs?”

“Oh, absolutely. You make sure to give Booker at least four of them, and I’ll get started on the girls.” Joe couldn’t help but laugh as he heard Nicky crack his jaw in mock preparation. “I’ve got to go, Yusuf. I love you.”

Joe repeated Nicky’s farewell back to him with his stomach still twisting in misery. He couldn’t do anything different for Booker than what he was currently doing, and he couldn’t actually imagine falling asleep in the state that he was in. There had to be something he could do without leaving the room or waking Booker up. He decided to gingerly slide out from under Booker, with an hazy plan of organizing the top of a dresser.  
\--

“Joe, just leave the dress alone.”

“Why won’t it fucking fit in the closet?” Joe was in the middle of an excellent seething fit while wrestling with the massive dress and no amount of Booker’s feeble complaints were going to stop him from fulfilling his mission. He hissed at the gargantuan dress as he tried to fit it into the closet without creasing the delicate fabric. “How the fuck did they even get it into a suitcase without bunching it up?”

“I can almost guarantee you that they just shoved it in one of the duffle bags instead.” Booker was resentfully glaring from his nest on the bed, clearly irritated by Joe’s lack of effort in trying to be quiet as he tidied up the room. Joe’s thrown wallet bounced harmlessly off of Booker’s throw pillow helmet. “If you can barely fit a jacket in a hotel closet, you’re not going to be able to put one hundred cubic feet of dresses in there neatly.”

“There’s only two dresses!”

“I stand by the accuracy of my measurements.” Booker weakly groaned as he rolled over in his nest. “It seems like it would just be easier to put their street clothing in there and keep the dresses out.” He defected a thrown pair of balled up socks with a lazy bat of his hand, and was visibly amused at Joe’s sputtering noises of scandalized rage.

“That would be an invasion of their privacy!”

“Oh yes, so much worse than you organizing their beauty products by the number of the positive reviews on the internet. Or bombarding people with their socks, for that matter.” Booker abruptly froze with a horror struck look as he finally took notice of the flattering dark green and black sweater that he was wearing. “Where did you get this sweater?”

“Borrowed it.”

“Jesus Christ, you could’ve just given my shirt a quick run through the sink instead.” Joe wolfishly grinned at Booker’s brilliant suggestion. “Why do you only go along with the ideas that I don’t want you to do?”

“I’ll run you a bath if you shut up and strip.”  
\--

“Joe, I can’t get this shampoo to work, and there’s a clump of blood stuck in my hair.”

Booker’s voice was both pleading and quietly embarrassed, and Joe sighed as he glanced over at the source of the aromatic steam filling the small bathroom. He had been trying to avoid looking in that direction after just a quick glance at the golden collar adorning Booker’s bare neck had made instantly his mouth go dry and make his pants tighten. 

It wasn’t a shock that he was finding Booker attractive, since he and Nicolo had been idly batting around the idea of inviting the younger man into their bed just over six decades ago. Then Booker had been taken, and they had both been too worried about making things worse after finding him to even think about bringing it up. Now Booker was with Nile, which was just great. Peachy, even. Didn’t have a thing to do with the collar that Joe had bought and put on him.

“Well, you are French, so of course you don’t know how to use shampoo.” Joe diligently folded his wet shirt over the hand towel rack before ambling over to the tub with a hand held out for the shampoo bottle. “I can try to eradicate the last of your fleas, if you want, since you apparently haven’t been charging them rent for the last couple of centuries.”

“Everybody had fleas back then, Joe.” He was gratified that Booker clearly felt comfortable enough at the idea to instantly slap the black container into Joe’s offered palm. “It was just the clean freaks like you that got all twitchy about them.”

“If you mean civilized people who bathed on a regular basis, then yes, that’s why we were twitchy around you at the time. It also didn’t have anything to do with the fact that you were insistent on trying to strangle us in the middle of the night.” 

Joe gave the label of the pressed shampoo bar a startled double take. “Isn’t Trichomania the mental disorder where you can’t stop pulling out your own hair?”

“I think that it might be Trichotillomania. Why do you want to know?” 

“Because that’s what they named this shampoo.” Joe was deeply appreciative of the thick layer of bubbles hiding most of Booker’s body as the younger man turned over curiously in the water to read the offered container as Joe peeled the lid off. “That’s still the worst fucking name for a hair product that I’ve ever seen.” Booker stretched his neck out to smell it, before shrugging lightly.

“Hair related mental disorders smell like coconut, apparently.” Booker groped over the side of the tub in search of the matching container of pressed conditioner, and over dramatically sighed in relief when he managed to find and read it. “Sugar Daddy-O, for keeping blond hair bright. The cure for all of my woes and anxieties has finally arrived, along with a French Kiss bubble bath.”

“Andy will be so thrilled to hear that she has to set up a massive budget on beauty products. Dunk your head, would you?”

Joe found himself musing away at a nagging little thought while he settled into the soothing routine of cleaning Booker’s hair, and the towel that had helpfully tossed over the side for him to kneel on was bunching up as he fidgeted in thought.

He shook his head as he cupped his wet hand against the tangle of bloodied hair in an attempt to soak and loosen the knot where Booker had hit his head. A concussion would certainly explain some of Booker’s more alarming symptoms during the previous night.

“Joe, you may as well just tell me what you’re thinking about.” Booker’s voice had descended into an even more gravelly purr than his usual speaking tone, which was apparently caused by how relaxed he had become under Joe’s ministrations. Joe hastily threw himself back into his previous line of thought before speaking,

“How come there’s nothing accredited to my home country?” Booker tilted his head questioningly, and Joe elaborated further. “Like how there’s no such thing as a Arabian hug for example.”

“Well, your people did invent universities, surgery, and toothbrushes. Maybe they just didn’t want to sound like they were bragging.”

“Even the Spaniards have stuff named after them. Spanish Inquisition, Spanish fly.”

“I don’t think it’s a particularly proud moment to have the time where you tortured and slaughtered thousands of people named after your country. Or having a dubious sexual stimulant named after you as well.”

“Of course, France ended up with everything. The French Revolution-”

“Again with the murdering and the torturing.”

“-French fries, braids, toast, vanilla, kissing. How the hell did the last one happen, anyway?”

“That’s because my people are widely known as the sexiest humans on the planet.” Booker tipped his head back with a lazy smile as he shimmied his hips underwater.

“Well, I’ve certainly always thought the possibility of having a plague infested rat leap out of somebody’s public hair would be the height of attractiveness.”

Booker was startled into throaty laughter, and Joe twitched when he realized he was thinking about biting Booker’s enticingly unmarked neck and making him squirm underneath him. Fuck, that was a terrible idea.  
\--

“Hey, are you guys still in there?”

Joe froze when he heard a raspy voice calling from the other side of the door, already grabbing the pistol he had just slid into his thigh holster in their preparation to leave. Booker silently padded his way over to flank the door with a drawn gun of his own. He quickly nodded at Joe before indicating the spy hole in the door with a tilt of his head. Joe glanced through it to see who was trying to talk to them.

There was a young, fox faced Middle Eastern man lounging against the far side of the hallway while holding a tray of steaming coffee cups. 

He was attractive enough in an androgynous sort of way, and Joe carefully noted his black buzz cut and the fashionably discreet clothing that was faintly bulging in certain areas. He glanced up to where Joe was watching him, and Joe frowned as he tried to figure out what was odd about the movement before he relayed his observations to Booker.

“Well, I’m personally flattered that you two think I’m cute. Any chance that you’re going to let me into my room before the coffee gets cold?”

Booker gave Joe a deeply exasperated look. 

“Who are you, exactly?”

“I’m the person who gave you the room key yesterday. I’m also very tired, and I need my lubricating eye drops like you would not believe.”

“That person was a woman-” Joe yelped as Booker made an angry clicking noise while stomping on Joe’s foot.

“I was a woman. Now I’m a man. Sam, come here and show them your ship wig as proof.” Joe caught a glimpse of his indulgent smile while Booker’s tiny savour thrust the unmistakable wig into view. Booker opened the door with a soft smile at the young woman, who was watching them with massive blue eyes. 

“I’m-”

Joe blinked as the shorter man whipped past him before he could get another word out, and he was already scrambling towards the bathroom while flinging his long wool coat at the nearest chair with a faint clicking noise. 

Something hot burned against his thumb, and Joe was startled to realize that the man had managed to give the coffee tray to Joe without him even noticing the motion.

“Sorry, we’ve had a really long night.” The delicately built blond woman staggered a little under the weight of the wig she was still clutching in her arms, and Booker gallantly swept in to relieve her of her burden.

Joe was betting that it was much heavier than it had looked, judging from Booker’s surprised grunt and the way a miniature mast almost went up his left nostril when he over corrected his grip on it. “We were just released from the police station an hour ago, and we didn’t get a chance to sleep yet-”

“Samara, did you see where I put my back up eye drops?”

“Right side on the top shelf above the bathroom sink.” Joe winced after instantly answering the yelled question. There was a small, socially awkward filled pause before the man in the bathroom spoke up again.

“Well, thank you for that…?”

“Joe and Sebastien.” Joe steadily ignored the stink eye that Booker gave him for dragging his real name into it.

“Drew. I do wish we could’ve met you under better circumstances than last night.” Drew strided back out into the hallway with a pained hiss and one hand cupped over his right eye. “Babe, do you mind taking a look at it? I think that one cop might have scratched me when he was trying to dig out my eye, and I need a second opinion on it.”

“They did what?” 

Booker’s venomously hissed question yanked Joe’s attention right back to him, and Joe immediately placed his hand on Booker’s back, which was already vibrating in undiluted rage. Fuck, he could already see the skin on the back of Booker’s neck and ears turning red. He wasn’t fond about the police to start with, and Joe was pretty sure that abusing the people who saved him could spark a rampage of bloody retribution.

“Well, my prosthetic eye. I mean, it was still a shitty move, but it’s not like they went after my original one.” Drew lifted his hand away to reveal the empty socket of his right eye, and Joe belatedly noticed that the skin on that side of his pretty face was feathered in pale flecks of old scar tissue. “Lost that one in an overly aggressive mascara application ages ago.” Joe could hear something jingling beneath Drew’s black t-shirt when he moved to blink at Samara, his eyelids fluttering over the empty space. “Is your flashlight still in your purse?”

Joe found himself fascinated by how realistic eye prosthetics had become over the centuries while Samara diligently peered into Drew’s eye socket before pronouncing that it looked a little red as she dropped an affectionate kiss on the tip of his nose. He could clearly remember when the height of technology for false eyes tended to be a ball of clay when Drew easily slipped the ceramic looking semicircle back into place.

“Aw, now I’m going to have to put deliberate effort into winking at them, babe.” Joe blushed as the much, much younger man cheekily grinned at Booker and himself as he dug through one of the suitcases, while Samara winked at him with a warmly amused smile. “Should I tell them how I go into golf games with a natural advantage?”

“One, you don’t even play golf, and two, if you do tell that joke, I will preemptively divorce you at least four times. Minimum. Then I’ll never get to see you in your wedding dress, and it’ll all turn out to be a total tragedy.” 

Joe noticed that for all of the false annoyance in her voice, Samara was still checking out Drew’s ass as he bent over to select a new shirt.  
“That will also mean that I made that cop cry for no good reason, and our lawyer will still be pissed off at the both of us.”

“I have an advantage in golf, because I already come with a hole in one.”

Samara tackled Drew onto the bed before the awful joke fully registered, and Booker dropped his face into his palms with a pained noise next to him. 

Joe could barely connect the person with the cold, blank eyes who went to bat for them in their time of need, and the person who was gleefully cackling as Samara playfully bit at their bare midriff. He was happy for the couple, but that much blazing joy made his ancient soul ache under the weight of the countless lifetimes that he had gone through. Did Booker and Andy always feel this way when they were around Nicky and himself? 

Booker’s reassuring squeeze to Joe’s hip suggested that they might indeed feel that way, and Joe passively allowed Booker to pull him down into his lap when he moved to sit in the chair that Drew’s coat was still puddled in.

“Don’t sit down!”

Booker’s whole body convulsively flinched at Drew’s panicked shout, and Joe felt like he was sitting on a particularly gangly and freaked out spider when Booker had instantly spread eagled his limbs out to hold himself and Joe up and off of the chair. Joe had instinctively held onto the nearest stable object during the sudden movement, which was unfortunately a double handful of Booker’s particularly perky backside. 

“What’s under me?”

Booker’s voice was sounding somewhat strangled, and Joe deeply appreciated the fact that the younger man hadn’t instantly bitten off his ear for the unwanted groping.

“There’s a large knife in the right hand side of my coat. It’s very sharp, and it’s in a very shitty sheath.” Drew had already rolled off the bed in a fluid motion that was all feline grace, and was quickly darting over to their side as he spoke. “I won it off a guy I served with in a card game, and he was feeling a little pouty at the time and didn’t give me the original sheath. I wouldn’t move if I were you, Sebastien.”

“I’m not. Very still.” Joe tried to weigh less as Booker arched his back up from where it had sagged a little as Drew gingerly pulled his coat from underneath them in an excessively careful way, with lots of worrisome adjustments on the way. “I’m renowned for it, really-” Booker paused as he presumingly got a look at the knife. “Drew, that isn’t a knife, that’s a slightly underfed machete.”

Booker abruptly dropped down in the seat once Drew was out of range, and Joe was just starting to plot his escape from Booker’s lap when he finally got a look of his own at Drew’s weapon. For once, Joe almost agreed with Booker’s opinion. The matte black knife was as long as Drew’s forearm, and the biggest difference from most machetes came solely down to the serrated shape of it.

“Yeah, the guy has a bit of a bigger knife equals a bigger dick complex. He does keep them sharp, though.” Drew carefully placed the knife on top of a cleared dresser before starting the hunt for the room service menu, unaware of the snickering fit Booker was trying to smother into the back of Joe’s neck. 

“Well, that certainly explains you and Nicky.” Booker’s mouth was humming against the spot on his neck that Nicky had learned to mercilessly exploit centuries ago, and Joe’s head was spinning from the familiar arousing sensation. “Of course, I wouldn’t know anything about if Nicky’s happens to be longer or wider, or if yours has that curve built in. And if I don’t know, Nile probably doesn’t know either-”

“If you two are so damn curious about us, I’m sure Nicky and I can arrange a live demonstration.”

Oh. Fuck.

Joe felt the blood draining from his face as what he had blurted out finally caught up with his flustered mind, and immediately started calculating if he could get a decent headstart on fleeing the country if he bolted right now.

If somebody had paid him to break the news that he and Nicky were interested in Booker and sweet, young Nile in the worst way possible, he wouldn’t have been able to beat what his moronic, horny mouth had just said. Perfect. All he had to do was burn a daycare or two to the ground, and he could officially win the title of the worst human being currently on the planet.

Drew and Samara were still talking with each other as Joe tried to level himself off of Booker’s lap, and he was unprepared for Booker’s fingers digging in just enough to keep him in his place. Joe whipped his head back to see why he hadn’t been let go, and shakily inhaled at how dark with interest Booker’s eyes had become while he quietly purred into Joe’s ear,

“I think that would be very fun. We’d have to talk with Nicky and Nile about it first, though.”

Booker released his grip on Joe’s hips, and he managed to stumble to his feet like a newborn deer with very bad knees. Samara and Drew were still cheerfully chatting with each other as they apparently strove to give Booker and himself as much privacy as they could muster in a six hundred feet and three quarter inch hotel room. (Joe had been particularly desperate for something to do at three in the morning, and measuring everything had temporarily fit the bill.)

“Hey, do you guys want anything from room service?” Samara’s voice was muffled as she pulled off a baggy sweater that was obviously matching in size to the one Booker was wearing, and Joe sternly reminded himself to either buy it off of her or return it. 

“The people running the convention are footing our bill, and we’ve got free tickets for the next ten years for stopping that asshole. It turned that out he was planning on slaughtering his way through the whole hotel, and you just ended up as his first target.”

“Well, I’m just glad they gave us the chance to change into our street clothing before we got arrested.” Drew sighed wearily as he scratched at the back of his head, “You can fit a fucking Volkwagon Beetle worth of spare clothing under those hoop skirts, but you sure as shit can’t squeeze fourteen feet of them into the back of a squad car.”

“How did you get those dresses in your luggage, anyhow?” Joe couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t ask.

“We mailed the hoop skirts here, but we just shoved the dresses in the duffle bags.”

Booker was already cackling like a hag behind him.

Fuck.  
\--

They ended up spending most of the day in Drew and Samara’s quite pleasant company while Booker hammered out plans for a dinner date with Iris.

Joe and Booker also found out a lot about them, eventually learning that Drew was a vicious card shark and had become a surgeon in Los Angeles after retiring from the Special Forces. (He was highly amused at Joe’s shock upon finding out that he was in his very early forties, and was already a doctor.) 

They also learned about Samara’s expansive knowledge of weapons, and keen interest in serial killer history as well as her vague answers about being a consultant in the same city as Drew.

It all somehow led to Drew proudly insisting on Samara showing off her Sevan Bicakci engagement ring, and the flock of miniature swans carved into the largest diamond. (Joe took an embarrassing amount of photos of it, because he knew that both Andy and Nicolo would be interested in it.) Which was followed up by both of them formally inviting Joe and Booker to their wedding in August of the following year.

Booker ended up inviting them in a flustered retaliation to dinner, where Joe met Iris, who turned out to be a very sweet Asian woman, and Booker finally received his sniper rifle in a discreet carrying case. They parted company with the young couple in a flurry of exchanged emails on Booker and Joe’s part, and professional looking business cards on Drew and Samara’s.

To neither of their disappointment, the tiny AMC Pacer had been towed during their extended stay. Since there hadn’t been anything left in the car that couldn’t be easily replaced, and seeing how neither of them loved it enough to retrieve it from the impound lot, they instead decided to start the hunt for a new vehicle that they could slog across America in at the promising hour of one in the morning. 

Joe opted to leave all the selection and haggling process to Booker, since the man had been able to nitpick minor flaws in the things he wanted to buy and drive prices down since he was two. Really, it made the expensive collar that Booker was still wearing all the more satisfying a purchase for Joe. 

Of course, just thinking about the damn thing sent Joe off into a particularly filthy daydream, which heavily featured Nicolo and Nile sternly forcing Joe onto his knees before using their coaxing hands to keep his mouth soft and open as Booker pounded his cock down his throat.

He must have made a small noise while he was shaking his head in an attempt to get his mind out of the gutter, because Booker was giving him a somewhat concerned look while also making the salesman wish he had met him. Joe breezily waved him off while watching Booker redoubling his haggling over the perfectly decent truck Joe was leaning against.

Well, he may as well organize his wallet while Booker finished up the sale. He had got rid of a half a dozen receipts he didn’t need and added up the amount of cash and change he had left on him before he was bored enough to look at Drew’s business card.

He had been idly wondering whether Drew’s name was short for something else. It turned out that it was indeed the shortened version of Drucilla, and Joe had to sit down hard on the truck’s tailgate when his legs lost the ability to hold himself up upon reading the second half of Drew’s name.

He still hadn’t been able to pull himself back together when Booker eventually strode up to him with signed paperwork in hand, and Joe found himself being unable to stop staring numbly across the parking lot as Booker proudly crowed about knocking two thousand dollars off the asked price for the truck. Joe knew that if there was anybody that could confirm or deny his sudden suspicions, it was Sebastien.

“Can you please read this?” 

Booker looked taken aback at Joe’s sudden formality, but he obediently plucked the slip of paper out of Joe’s numb fingers to read it out loud.  
“Doctor Drucilla A. Al-Kaysani. What’s the big deal-” Booker froze as the same realization that had occurred to Joe hit him. After all, Joe and Drew shared the same last name.

“Yeah.” Joe squeezed his eyes shut while remembering that his older sister had already had two children before Joe went off to die for the first time. “Do you think Drew could’ve been planted?”

“I doubt it. We didn’t even know where we were going until an hour before we got to the hotel, and you haven’t used your real last name for anything since before I was born.” Joe’s breath shuddered out in a shaking sigh as Booker swiftly soothed the first paranoid thought that he had when reading the card. 

“I know your surname isn’t that common, but they might not even be related to you.” Joe leaned into the embrace while Booker tightly hugged him. “I don’t want to take this news to Copley, so do you want me  
to see what I can find out about Drew’s family tree and see if there’s a connection to you?”

Joe would happily burn the world to the ground before news of any of their possible relatives would reach Copley’s ears. After all, he could easily imagine somebody strapping them to a dissection table for any distant clues on what made their tight knit family biologically tick.

“Please.”  
\--

Joe was starting to get worried about Booker. It had taken Joe just under twenty hours to drive from Las Vegas to the middle of Nebraska, with a refreshing four hour cat nap and snack shoved in the middle of it, and Booker hadn’t eaten, slept, or done anything but hammer furiously away at the tattered laptop they had bought on the way out of Nevada.

That, and frantically scribble notes on nearly everything that his Sharpie could write on, with the strict exception of the truck’s instruction manual, since the thing was hard enough to figure out even without spidery names and dates scribbled on the troubleshooting page. As it was, Booker had run out of eligible space on his own arms and was currently aiming for new territory.

“Would you please pull up your pants? The drivers passing us are going to think that I’m molesting you.” Not that there was an excess of writing room on Booker’s muscular thighs, but a point had to be made.

“Maybe later.” 

Well, that could've been an actual agreement about the molesting idea, or it had gone completely over Booker’s head and he was automatically answering to whatever he thought Joe had said. It was fifty-fifty odds, really. Joe sighed heavily through his nose at his next obvious course of action, and hoped that Nile hadn’t been lying when she said hand sanitizer would get permanent marker off skin without rubbing it raw.

“Hold the wheel while I get my shirt off, would you?” 

“What?” Booker’s eyes had gone completely bloodshot from the hours of staring at the computer, and there was a gray tinge to his skin Joe wasn’t crazy about.

“You can write on me, you just have to keep it below my neck. Wheel.” Booker twitched at the firm command, but he willingly reached over to steer as Joe wrestled his shirt off before flinging it into the back seat and taking full control of the truck once again. 

His skin had started turning into gooseflesh despite the truck's heating system, and he couldn’t help but feel like Booker wasn’t taking proper advantage of him when he hadn't written on in the half hour since he had taken his shirt off. “Just write on me already.”

“Bossy.” Booker dryly smiled as he finally gave in and started scrawling notes across the side of Joe’s rib cage, with one cold hand resting on his side to keep the skin taut as he wrote. Joe’s brain threw up a red flag of warning. Booker never ran cold.

They were just west of Chicago when Booker abruptly passed out into Joe’s lap. Joe managed to safely pull the truck into a suburban strip mall before feeling for a pulse in Booker’s neck. A little weak, but steady. Exhaustion and low blood sugar was Joe’s uneducated guess about what had caused Booker to suddenly drop. 

He sighed while he affectionately petted Booker’s hair. Nile was right, they probably all needed some education about taking proper care of themselves. A quick glance at the sparse grouping of stores in the strip mall confirmed that it had everything that he needed. A small grocery store, an upscale looking cheese shop, and a Starbucks. Perfect.  
\--

“Does Polly want a cracker?” Joe was waiting patiently for Booker’s response, even as Booker murderously glared over the Pumpkin Spice Latte that he was sucking down. He was fully planning on milking it, since it had taken some work to both rouse him and cram a charcuterie spread into the front seat of the truck.

“I’m not a toddler, so just give me the fucking cracker.”

“Well, I’m not the jackass who wouldn’t take care of himself, so you can just deal with it.” Joe balanced a small strawberry on top of the brie cheese oozing its way across the small cracker, and decided to push his luck even more. “Open wide for the birdie!”

“Why did I stop deliberately murdering you, again?” Booker grudgingly accepted the offered cracker with an open mouth. It only took a few moments before he let out a heartfelt moan. “Alright, that brie is really good.” Joe made a mental note to pick up more of that particular cheese before they started driving again.

“What did you say to get your kids to eat their food?” Joe was mildly worried that he had gone too far, but he was pretty sure that Booker’s face was creasing from trying to remember, rather than painful memories.

“If you don’t eat, the rats are going to steal it.” Booker shrugged apologetically at Joe’s look of horror. “It was accurate, and sounded slightly less depressing back then. Did you get me any black olives?”

Their impromptu meal lasted another hour, and Booker had already fallen asleep by the time Joe got back with the Fromager D'affinois Double Cream Brie and the laptop, which he had taken with him as a hostage. Joe tucked the four and a half pound wheel of cheese into the back seat where it would hopefully stay cooler, and thanked Allah that he had the common sense to have the barista make the sugary latte with decaf. Hopefully Booker would sleep for a while.  
\--

“Yusuf!”

Of course Booker would choose this exact moment to wake up and start yelling for him after sleeping for twenty five hours. Couldn’t have waited until Joe wasn’t one hundred and fifty feet underground, and trying to haul both thirty pounds of decaying paperwork and his own ass up the very long ladder that delved deep into their Massachusetts cach, which had started out as a abandoned nuclear fallout shelter, and was currently the most annoying cache to get into. 

All four of them had opted to swan dive down the hole a few times instead of climbing down the fourteen storie long ladder. Sadly, there wasn’t an equally quick alternative to getting back up to the surface.

Joe took a quick glimpse up at where the narrow ladder terminated with a flung open trap door. The tiny circle of blue sky visible through the hole had widened by a fraction, and he could hear the faint call of seagulls. Booker yelled again, and Joe could hear a suggestion of worry in his voice.

“I’m coming, you yowling lynx!”

Joe immediately regretted yelling in the tight confines as the echoing deafened him for a few moments while he clung to the rough metal rungs.

Booker’s head blocked the sunlight for a few seconds, seemingly trying to see just how far down Joe was before he pulled back and disappeared. Well, it wasn’t like he could’ve helped him get up there any faster, but it would’ve been nice to have some semblance of company for the next fifteen minutes while he kept climbing. 

Something dropped with a metallic clang across the far away entrance, and Joe had just jerked his head up to check on it when a roughly fashioned shoulder harness made out of rope slithered down to swing in front of him.

Well, he wasn’t going to look that particular gift horse in the mouth. It took some careful maneuvering, but he eventually managed to fit himself into it and get into a position where none of his limbs would accidentally get caught in any of the deep set ladder rungs before he yanked on the rope twice.

It took a few moments, and a rough jerk, but he started getting pulled up the entrance pipe fast enough that he could smell the rubber burning off the bottom of his boots from where they were braced against the rough concrete.

He had just ducked his head away from the improvised pulley system that Booker had strung across the entrance when the man himself bounced out of the truck, which had to have been Booker’s weapon of choice for dragging Joe out of there out of there that fast. 

“Hi, Joe. Have you been down there long?” Booker was practically bouncing on his toes, and Joe could only speculate on why he was in such a good mood as he helped pull him out of the trap door. 

“It had to be about three hours-”

“Perfect, I grabbed lunch for us while you were gone. Where did I write on you last?”

“Well, you drew a Fleur-de-lis just above my nipple when you were awake around midnight.” Joe laughed as Booker’s expression veered towards alarm, and filled him in with more information. “You were acting a bit squirrely at the time. You also scribbled some gibberish next to my collarbone before you fell asleep again.”

“Sorry about that. Do you mind if I-” Booker made a vague gesture towards Joe’s shirt, which he translated as looking for permission to get underneath it again. 

“Go for it.” Joe slung his full backpack of paperwork onto the bed of the truck before peeling his shirt off to let Booker look at whatever he needed to see. He shivered as Booker’s calloused hands rested on his bare torso, warming him a little in the fall weather as Booker added up what all the scribbling meant. “Where’d you get the food from?”

“I drove into town and found a Halal certified Syrian restaurant.” A thumb swiped perilously close to one of his nipples, and he was very glad that he had decided to phone Nicky while Booker was asleep and give him some warning about the potentially changing situation. “It had about sixty Middle Eastern grannies lined up in front of it, so I figured it had to be good.” Booker abruptly crouched down to look at something that he had scrawled across Joe’s lower back. “I heard you calling me a lynx on the way up. Are you giving me pet names now?”

“Well, you are fluffy, do well in the cold and have enormous feet, in addition to all the yowling. Very insulting.” 

“Barely a blip on the radar, kitten.” Booker stood back up with a jaw popping yawn. “Well, it turns out that you’re not Drew’s uncle.”

Joe felt his heart sink as he pulled his shirt back on, more than a little disappointed after all the hope and excitement building up over the last five days. 

“You’re actually cousins. As far as I can tell, her lineage actually started from your first cousin Mishal. You know, your uncle Asad’s second oldest daughter-” Booker let out a small squeak as Joe stopped trying to hold back from gratefully kissing his clever mouth, and held the taller man still for a moment or two before parting with a grin.

“You’re so brilliant, Booker. How the hell did we get along without you for so long?” A terrible thought struck him, and he couldn’t help but hiss in terror with Booker’s face still firmly cupped between his hands, “I thought Drew was attractive!”

“Yusuf, they’ve got about nine hundred years of genetic separation from you. I think it’ll be fine.” Booker wryly smiled at him with a rare gleam of pride in his eyes. “Not to mention that they’re happily in love, at the top of their career field, and the type of person to rescue random strangers at the risk of their own life. Plus, Samara is totally terrifying in a perky sort of way.”

“I’m so glad that I wasn’t the only person picking up vague serial killer vibes from her.” Joe sniffed faintly, still blissfully unaware of how everything was going to go straight to hell twenty three hours from now in Miami. “Did you buy me lamb?”

“I figured it might help break up the massive wheel of cheese in the back seat.”

“Brat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the lovely comments! The next chapter is going to be split between Nile and Andy as everything goes to hell. I'd love to read your comments if you liked this.


	4. In Which A Well Thought Out Plan Goes To Hell In A Handbasket.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the true tortures of working in Human Resources are exposed, shovel talks are dispensed, and the team's worst collective nightmare come to pass.

“Good morning, Nile.”

Booker was sleepily drawling on the other side of the phone, purring a little over the words as he spoke. Nile blushed and barely managed to stop her knee jerk reaction to hang up the phone, which would have been a pretty stupid move, considering she was the one phoning Booker at six in the morning. 

She hadn’t honestly expected him to pick up after not hearing from him for the past day or so, since he and Joe had given the impression that they were hauling their asses across the country as fast as they could, and that Booker was up to his eyebrows researching something that was taking up a lot of his time.

“Hi Booker. How are...things?” 

Jesus, she wished she could’ve come up with something less incriminating of how awkwardly confused and flustered she had been feeling for the past week, but her mind was too worn down from the long week of working and spying in the Human Resource department at the Miami branch of Goliath Worldwide Enterprises. 

The daily four am sparring matches with Andy and Nicky, on top of the hour long runs directly afterwards weren’t helping her get any better at making up excuses to put Booker off the scent of the thing that had thrown her for a loop.

“I’m fine. Nile, is there something that’s upsetting you?” Booker’s voice was brimming with sympathy and concern, and Nile briefly considered faking a dropped call and fleeing the room. On the other hand, dancing around the subject bothering her in order to avoid it had never helped in any of her previous relationships, and it would probably just magnify the issues if it built up over centuries.

“I know that Joe propositioned having sex with us and Nicky.” There, she said it. “I was sleeping when he first brought it up to you, and I accidently walked in on the phone call when he was talking about it to Nicky.” She tensely waited for Booker’s reponse. 

“Yeah, I’m freaked out a little about it, too.” It sounded like Booker was blowing out a long, relieved sigh through his nose as he spoke. “I was going to tell you about it tomorrow. How are you holding up?”

Nile rolled around in her thoughts for a few moments as she stared up at her bedroom ceiling. She had half expected Booker to deny anything was happening, or that he was going to leave her a week and a half into their newly formed relationship. The news that he was also unsure and perhaps a bit flattered by the unexpected offer was oddly reassuring.

“I thought they were both gay.” Well, that came out much blunter than she was aiming for, and she sheepishly smile as Booker chuckled on the other end of the line.

“Well, I’m not the only one being invited along for a ride, Nile, and they’re not asking about you just to be polite.” Nile’s face burned as she thought of a different kind of riding, and managed to be honest with herself just long enough to internally admit that being shared by and sharing the three main men in her life wouldn’t be a hardship. Hell, it wasn’t even the first time she had thought about it.

“Have you ever done anything like this before with them?”

“Well, I’ve only ever kissed Joe, but you were there for that.” Nile was surprised that Joe and Booker’s first kiss had been the one during his horrifying panic attack that she witnessed, since they had locked onto each other with the ease of years of practice. Or at least it had been on Joe’s end of things- “Nicky and I did streak naked together through the Kremlin and Red Square a couple of years ago, though.”

Nile was pretty sure Booker’s bark of laughter was at the obviously fond memory, rather than the way she was choking on her own spit. Nile couldn’t help but join in on his infectious cackle as she managed to gasp out a question,

“D-did a mission go pear shaped or w-what?”

“Nope! Joe said we would get turned into strogonoff by the guards before we got fifteen feet into the square, and then the Kremlin was more of a victory lap than anything.” Booker was still snickering over the faint sound of traffic going by in the background. “Of course, it was a particularly cold February day, so I think it took the KGB longer to actually spot any of our scandalous bits.”

“Who’s idea was it?” Nile rolled off the bed with the intention of seeing if she could manage to stretch any of her office appropriate clothing into another day. Andy had assured her that they were getting closer to getting their hands on the information they were after, and she didn’t particularly want to drag all her work clothing through the dry cleaner again.

“Nicky’s highly devious mind came up with the whole thing, actually.” Booker sounded much more relaxed than he had at the start of their conversation, and she couldn’t help but smile as he audibly muffled a yawn. “Trust me, behind those big green eyes is a bad man who will lead you astray, and give you frostbitten nipples.”

“I’m sure the nipple thing must’ve been a one time deal. Look, I’ve got to start getting dressed-” Booker purred in interest at the news, and Nile bravely continued onwards to her point, regardless of the circumstances of when she had last heard him make a noise like that. “-And I’ll try to phone you again tonight and see if we can hash things out more. Try to keep your purring to yourself.”

“I can’t promise that I’ll be on my best behavior later, sweetheart. Kick names and take asses at work today, and I’ll talk to you later.”

“Goodbye, Booker.” 

She hung up with a smile as Booker made a lewd kissing noise. Hell, it almost made up for having to wake up so early.

\--

“Do you want any coffee?” 

Nile heard Nicky’s voice emulating from around the corner when she eventually started trekking her way to the kitchen in hopes of hunting down some still edible leftovers. He was sitting cross legged in his customary spot on the kitchen counter, and she couldn’t help but shudder as he helpfully jiggled the half empty coffee carafe at her. 

She had drank some truly awful coffee over the years, but Nicky when he was making some coffee for himself and not showing off for Booker or Joe made some absolute trash. No spoon should’ve been able to balance upright by itself in a cup of coffee, but it was a hundred percent guarantee when it came to the rancidly burnt gutter water Nicky thrived on.

“Did you get that from one of the tar pits that the dinosaurs drowned in?”

“You’re very cute. Do you want me to make you a sandwich while I still have everything out?”

“Yes, please-” Nile cut herself off abruptly as she suspiciously glared at Nicky’s oddly quivering meal. “What did you put in there?”

“Spaghetti, grapefruit marmalade, scrambled eggs, blue cheese and some of that stuff out of the jar that we couldn’t identify.” Nicky sunnily beamed at her, and Nile had just enough composure left in her not to gag at his description of the sandwich. The mauled packaging on the mystery jar in question looked like it had been made in the seventies, and she swore that she had heard something growling below the bubbling greenish brown surface one night during a snack run to the fridge.

“Nicky, try to smother your inner trash fire for a little bit.” Andy’s voice was coming from the living room, and Nile gratefully took the opportunity to flee for safer territory.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of instantly gratifying calories.” Nile could hear him nimbly hopping off the counter behind her, and wasn’t surprised as she heard him padding lightly after her. “How’s Booker holding up?”

“Good, I think. He told me a story about you and him streaking through the Kremlin. Did you guys actually do that?”

“We absolutely did. I think Andy still has some photos kicking around from that, but they turned out pretty blurry.”

“Blurry from you guys running, or from the nudity?”

“Both.” Andy’s attention seemed equally divided between the local news channel on the tv, and the tangle of supple leather straps in her lap that she had been working on since Nile had shown an affinity for the Khopesh sword. 

Nile had been nervous enough when she had found out that the short, bronze sickle sword, which was the only bladed weapon in their massive cache that she felt like she wasn’t going to continuously kill herself with, happened to be 3,500 years old. 

Of course, Nicky and Andy’s next immediate move was to cheerfully tell her that it was short enough to dual wield, and fish another one out of the not so metaphorical heap while Andy started designing Nile a concealed holster that both swords could fit in if they went crosswise across her back.

Then it was onto a brutal week of sword training, which mostly consisted of trying not to get hit with Nicky’s longsword, and trying to fight back with the totally foreign weapons entrusted to her. Andy had dryly informed her numerous times that losing a few digits was an important part of every bladed weapon training process, and that Nile was becoming slightly less awful at it.

Nile was still able to recognize the fact that Andy’s idea of appropriate compliments were slightly off kilter, but heartfelt. Didn’t mean she loved hearing them any less.

“That accident downtown looks like it has that greasy CIA weasel’s fingerprints all over it.” Andy hammered another brass rivet into place with a particularly vengeful strike, causing the coffee table to creak warningly. “Fifteen years we’ve been chasing that motherfucker, and I’m going to shove that stupid glove of his right down his throat.”

The greasy, motherfucking CIA weasel was known only as Max to the group, and Nicky had gravely informed her of some of the terrible things that he did that they knew about once they had started sniffing out his influence in Florida. 

Andy had also threw in her two cents about Max in a venomous spray of words, and it only took Nile and Nicky a few quality hours on the internet to translate and distill it down into a somewhat modern Serberian promise to fuck and murder the first row of mourners at Max’s funeral. Nile privately thought doing that was over doing it on the mercy front when it came to their target.

“Sebastien and Yusuf will be here by noon tomorrow, and we can start tying things up for once and for all.” Nicky stretched over the back of Andy’s chair to tug affectionately at a lock of her hair. “I’ve got to take Nile to work in a few minutes and get up to my perch. Are you going to come by later and spot for me?”

“Yes, but I almost mistook a raccoon rooting around in a dumpster for you yesterday, so try not to bring your sandwich with you or I’ll never be able to tell the two of you apart.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t your mother that you saw?”

Nile wasn’t sure how she ever had the impression that Nicky was the only immortal who wasn’t a complete troll and trainwreck, but there he went making cracks about Andy’s mother while using Nile as a human shield as they escaped out the door.

\--

“Please, please tell me that it’s working now.” Nicky’s voice had some real desperation in it, and Nile had to bite back a smile as she crouched next to the office’s temperamental printer while he spoke through the tiny microphone lodged in her ear. “I mean it, I will give you anything you want if you managed to fix that pezzo di merda printer.”

“I don’t know, it’s looking pretty spiteful today.” She dutifully pressed the Retry button after she put all the pieces back in place, only to have it flash a red light at her with a rebellious screech for the fifteenth time in five hours. “No such luck.”

Andy was already sniggering at her plight when Nicky spoke up again with a clipped tone.

“Put your ear piece on the printer, Nile. I’m just going to talk to it for a moment or two.”

Nile wasn’t entirely sure if the printer would decide to be any more productive if Nicky decided to scream at it, and opted not to risk pissing it off by following his request.

“Go for it.”

“Woman, I can clearly see the blisters forming and healing on your feet from here, so I can also damn well see that your microphone isn’t anywhere near it.”

Nile sighed as she delicately took out and placed her one form of communication on the off white plastic before he started talking again. She couldn’t hear what he said very well, but it sounded long, vicious, and Italian. She figured that he had finished saying his piece a minute or two later, and popped her ear piece back into place.

“What did you say to it?”

“Well, it was a bit different from the Italian I use, but I’m pretty sure that Nicky just told the printer that he was going to fuck its dead relatives, and its grandfather’s, and its mother’s, and three quarters of its fishing village.”

“I actually said three quarters of its apartment block, Andy.” The printer cheerfully spat out the photo that Nile was supposed to have brought to her manager ten minutes ago for the purpose of reprimanding somebody. “See, it listened to reason!”

Nile couldn’t help but make a despairing noise as she finally clapped eyes on the photo. Fucking Human Rescources, and its endless swamp of high defintion dick photographs. She wordlessly held the picture up over her shoulder so that her teammates could get a decent look at it with their scopes and binoculars. Andy and Nicky made simultaneous sympathetic noises at the sight of it.

“I think that one is Jefferson again, from Internal Security. It has the same weird bend at the end, and it’s not even that great to look at.”

“Well, it’s certainly not up the standard of Joe or Booker’s.” Nile could feel Nicky’s immediate mortification pouring through their shared frequency as they all took a few moments to think over what he had just blurted out. “How about we find you some better high heels after you get off work. Maybe some sushi, as my treat.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Janet is coming up on your seven.”

Nile flashed a grateful smile over her shoulder for Nicky as she stood up, entirely unaware that his rifle scope wobbled for just a second at the sight.

\--

“No human would be able to walk in these things.” Nile clapped the ten inch high strappy heels together, and watched in horror as a cloud of silver glitter billowed over the display table. She vaguely felt like she should be stuffing a ten dollar bill in the wide ankle cuffs, and she jiggled them harder at Andy and Nicky to get her point across. “Who the hell would even be able to stand up in these?”

“Booker would probably be able to do back flips in those.” Nicky was squinting at the dozens of high heels displayed across one of the store’s walls, and didn’t look up at Nile’s weak interrogative noise. “He’s amazingly graceful at that sort of thing. Hey, what do you think of those leather wedge booties?”

“Umm.” Nile blinked bemusedly at the admittedly cute and office appropriate shoes, only giving them half the attention they deserved. “Do you know if they come in black?”

He immediately took off to try and to track a sales person down, and Nile pleadingly glanced at Andy, since she was the only person who could shed more light on the bombshell Nicky had just haphazardly dropped, or whether he was just fucking with her. Andy gave her a wicked smile that would’ve given a weaker person heart palpitations from the bench she was stretched out on.

“Booker and Joe got into an argument a while back about who would walk better in high heels for a little thing we had in New York. It took him about six skull fractures from bouncing off of the tops of doorways before he got the hang of them, but he turned out to be able to strut circles around Joe in them.”

She could see Andy’s eyes slip shut behind her sunglasses, and she had a beatific smile on her face as she spoke again,

“There’s still a video somewhere of him trying to chase Booker in them while he’s screaming at Joe to eat shit and die mad about it. Wake me up when we’re leaving.”

Nile sat down on the end of the bench while she swung Andy’s booted feet into her lap, and finally dropped her head back with a sigh. God, she missed them.

A person let out a familiar joyful howl of laughter somewhere in the mall, and Nile’s heart froze over as she clung to Andy’s legs as a buried memory abruptly surfaced in her mind. That sounded just like him. Why did some random stranger have to laugh just like her disgraced, dead best friend? He was dead, and he could fucking stay dead for all she cared.

“They do have black ones in your size.” 

They really should’ve followed through on Andy’s repeated threats to tie some bells on Nicky just so he would stop being quite so sneaky. Nile had a deep suspicion that he privately enjoyed the yelps of surprise, and she hastily pulled on a smile that felt horribly alien and false as she swiveled to look over at Nicky.

“Thanks for grabbing them.” Nile stretched her facial expression even further as her smile wobbled for a moment. Nobody would have to know about her momentary slip. ”What’s this I hear about Joe and Booker going around in high heels? Was there any Las Vegas show girls involved?”

“If your definition of show girls stretches to two stubbly, leggy men who wouldn’t stop yelling at or tripping each other, then yes, there was.” Nicky was already dropping to his knees in order to carefully slide her feet into the offered shoes, and Nile barely managed to keep herself from tensing as he looked up at her with an evaluating look. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I just got reminded of somebody I used to know.”

There, that was part of the truth. The other parts of it didn’t need to get exposed, like how her best friend since childhood had been both so damn smart and infuriating as long as she had known him. 

The way he never stopped running his mouth as they bounced from army base to army base, and how he and his older sister got completely entangled with her little brother and her mom, and how they had never been able to neatly divide the two families apart again.

How the big, blond idiot had reliably sent her care packages for her birthdays and holidays, no matter what he was doing or where he was stationed. 

How he and his team had died doing something so horrific that she could barely think about it, which was just eight weeks before she had died for the first time. How she would’ve given nearly anything to bring him back so that she could scream at him for what he had done before introducing him to everyone. She loved that fucking asshole.

“I’m good, really.”

She wasn’t.

\--

Andy internally sighed as the first round of sushi got delivered to their table. She had quite a bit to sigh about, since Nicky was continuing his world wide streak of receiving no pickled ginger with his sushi, she had a ping pong ball sized wad of wasabi, and something was clearly bothering Nile.

Well, everything but the last thing could be easily fixed.

She quickly dumped half of her own ginger onto Nicky’s plate before smoothly catapulting her mountain of wasabi into the nearest trash can with a neat flick of her chopsticks. It was all the more impressive of a trick shot, since the can was fifteen feet away, and she had to aim around the retreating waitress’s back just to make the shot. 

Nile feebly smiled at her before listlessly poking at her luscious looking salmon belly sashimi, which had done nothing to warrant such lackluster behavior. Some really excellent kimchi that had fizzed between her teeth as a shared appetizer hadn’t visibly helped either, and Nicky’s eyebrows were pretty much locked into a concerned position as he gave Andy a meaningful look.

No, she needed so much more food before she started navigating that particularly mopey minefield. After all, she only had two centuries of practice with Booker, and his melancholiness was a completely different beast to Nile’s sudden sadness. 

Over all, she thought that Booker, Nile, Nicky and Joe thinking about forming the beast with four backs would be pretty healthy for all of them, her reasoning based less on the fact that their predicted lifetimes were relatively synced up and more on the fact that they all had some gritty emotional issues that could be balanced out with each other, which would hopefully result in them ending up happy together. 

She also found it cute that the whole group thought they were being subtle about it. Hell, she had put up with enough of Nicky and Nile eyeing each other up when they thought the other person wasn’t looking for at least twenty years, and she could only imagine the chaotic flirting going on with Booker and Joe at the moment. 

Thankfully, Joe seemed just as interested in getting into Nile’s pants, and Nicky had a pretty long history of thinking about jumping Booker’s bones.

It could easily get awkward, otherwise. Andy quickly twitched her leg out of the way as Nicky suddenly shifted in his seat, and was rewarded with the faint sound of his toe crunching against her chair leg instead of his intended target.

His pale eyes flashed with a mildly murderous gleam, and Andy smugly smiled while she kept shoveling steamed rice into her mouth. She was still trying to strategize, and his badly thought out plan of kicking her to make her hurry wasn’t going to make plotting go any faster.

“Nile, if you ever get taken against your will, even by somebody you trust, we need you to fight your way out.” Nile cocked her head in sudden alertness, and Andy carefully avoided looking at Nicolo as she spoke. Ignorance could hurt a lot more than an uncomfortable conversation. “No bargaining with them, no waiting it out. Kill whoever took you, and we will find you. That’s a promise.”

“Andy-” Nicky’s eyes were wide with pain and what she thought was a flicker of panic about her speaking about one of Booker’s biggest mistakes and secrets.

“Is that what happened to Sebastien?”

“Yes. He thought he could trust his lover, and that person turned on him in one of the worst ways humanity has to offer.” Andy let out a pained sigh as she leaned back in her chair, “All of you have to take care of each other, even if this foursome idea doesn’t work out.”

The rise of Nicky’s sudden blush crept steadily up his neck and well into his stubbled cheeks, and Nile’s dark eyes lit up with a mischievous spark as she leaned forward with a smile.

“Are you giving all of us the shovel talk?”

“I think it would have to be the siege weapon talk to make any difference to you assholes.” Andy rewarded herself with a stolen piece of Nile’s glistening sashimi, and smugly smirked as Nile mimed stabbing her thieving hand with her chopsticks. “It would be hard enough forcing Joe and Booker to play nice together, anyway.”

“Sometimes a well placed guilt trip helps. Among other things.” Nicky still looked tense as he went back to nibbling on his avocado roll. “Not that you would be brave enough to scold the two of them about this, anyway.”

Andy wolfishly grinned as Nile dropped her phone into Andy’s hand before Nicky had time to squawk, with the app she wanted already set up and ringing through. 

“Hi Joe. How’s everything going with you and Booker?”

“Good. We’re just passing through Atlanta now.” Joe shrewdly smiled at them from the small screen before hastily muffling a loud yawn behind his hand. “You guys have to stop teasing Nicolo, or his head is going to explode.”

Nicky looked like he was seriously considering drowning himself in his miso soup when everybody heard Booker’s distant cackle of laughter.

“He’ll survive. Look, I know that the four of you are trying to fuck each other. Take care of each other, or I’m going to put somebody’s ass six feet underground.”

“Well, yeah. Goes without saying.” Joe airily flapped his hand at Andy’s concern before flirtatiously winking at Nicky and Nile. “You two look ravishing as always. Do you want a preview of the sonnet I composed for you?”

“Fuck, no.” The thing Joe was leaning the back of his head against shifted enough to reveal that it was the side of Booker’s shoulder, and Andy waved quickly at him when he glanced quickly away from the road with a relaxed smile. “By the way, I came up with an answer for your ‘Nothing is named after Arabia’ question.”

Nicky and Andy sighed in unison. Apparently Joe had been talking about the absurd subject that had been pissing him off for the last four hundred years again.

“Arabian nights.”

Booker looked amazingly pleased with himself as he elbowed Joe’s side, and Andy was forced to admit that it was the closest thing that any of them had managed to come up with, with none of the lewd fallout of the Italian Stallion suggestion. (Nobody had seen Nicky or Joe for straight three weeks after that had come up.)

“You’ve been thinking about that for over a week straight, and the best you can come up with is a somewhat tacky prom theme and an excuse to wear silky harem pants?”

“Well, it’s also a book.”

“Of course it is. Oh, Booker managed to find a long lost cousin of mine!” Joe was clearly radiating pride and joy at Booker’s prowess, and Andy didn’t even have to force a smile as she led the charge in follow up questions.

“That’s fantastic, Joe. What’s their name? Are they a man or a woman?”

“Their name is Drew, and I believe their gender is Yes.”

Well, that answer sparked a long enough conversation to get the whole group through the rest of their dinner, the drive home, and the several hours they spent on the couch catching up with their missing teammates until Joe had to finally hang up with numerous apologies.

“Why did you bring up Booker’s abduction?”

Nicky’s voice sounded both sad and curious, and Andy could barely see his face from where he was stretched out on the couch with a sleeping Nile in his arms. They both looked a little cold. 

“I wanted to try and get her mind off of whatever was eating at her.” Andy stood up with a recently developed crack of her knees, and smoothly draped a spare throw blanket over the both of them. Nicky solemnly blinked up at her from his prone position, and Andy ducked down to brush a light kiss over his cheek and the back of Nile’s head. “I thought she might be safer if she knew.”

She didn’t particularly want to voice her next thought, but she hoped it might lower the odds of it happening if she said her fear out loud.

“I don’t have a great feeling about this job.”

\--

“Alright, that’s enough.” Nicky’s sword had been kicked across the boxing ring moments ago, and its owner was currently pinned down on his back with Nile’s Khopesh held to his throat. “You two did well today.”

“And that’s a decent score from the Russian judge.” Andy rolled her eyes at Nicky’s purposely awful imitation of a Russian accent as Nile shoved her matching swords back into the holster that Andy had managed to push through and finish around two in the morning.

Nicky and Nile were both lathered in coats of sweat from the two hour long work out while Nile helpfully hauled Nicky upright, the erratic pink streaks on their skin marking where they had nicked each other through the long fight. 

“Joe’s going to lose his mind when he finally gets to fight you, Nile.” Andy didn’t miss the heated look Nile gave Nicky as he peeled his shirt off to mop up the sweat running down his face and chest. “Plus, it’ll give somebody else a chance to be hit by you for a change.”

“Thanks, Nicky.” Nile flashed a flattered smile at him as she bent over to turn off the high tempo music they both prefered for sparring. “Maybe we can kill the printer at the end of this job if we play our cards right.”

“How very Office Space of you, Nile.” Andy wryly smiled as she tossed a full water bottle at Nile’s stunned face. “I’m not so ancient that I can’t make pop culture references, you know. Make sure that you two grab a shower before we head out.”

“Why bother? We’re just going to have to run for an hour while dodging alligators anyway.” Nicky’s phone pinged a moment later, and he automatically glanced down at it. “Actually, Booker and Joe just spotted somebody walking a live one on a leash into a 7-11.”

“Good, they must be in Florida by now. I also need you to not smell like you’ve been thrashing around for the last two hours, because we’re going to skip the run and enter you two back into polite society.”

“Are we going shopping again?” Nile was wincing while she twisted her arm around behind her back to pull at something just below her shoulder blades.

“Not really. I was thinking about coffee and ice cream.” Nicky made a mildly appreciative noise as he toed off his sneakers with his sword in hand, still not really looking up at them. “But I’ll give you a hand taking off your sports bra first. Maybe we can take you lingerie shopping after work.” Really, Andy wasn’t really sure who she was teasing more.

“That sounds lovely, thanks.”

Nicky yelped loudly as he clumsily tripped on his way out the ring. This was going to be so much fun once everybody was back together.

\--

“It just seems like it’s going to hurt you.” Andy took another long sip of her breve as she warily stared up at the menu board strung above the ice cream store counter. The offered flavours were more creative than she had expected, and Nicky already had his heart set on one of the odder ones. “Maybe just get a sample, and see if you like it first.”

“What’s not to like?” Nicky brightly smiled at her while he lightly scratched through the stubble building up on his jaw. “Three scoops of frozen habanero pudding with white chocolate blondie chunks sounds divine. What are you two planning on getting?”

“I’ll probably get the milk chocolate and black liquorice one.” It seemed like it had taken a few extra moments for Nile’s attention to swing back around to their conversation, and Andy made a quick mental note to make sure that the boys let her sleep in late tomorrow.

“I think I want the honey and rosemary sorbet.” She gave her half empty coffee cup a deeply thoughtful look. “Well, it’s either going to taste awful or fantastic with the coffee.”

It really didn’t taste half bad with it when she got her hands on her early dessert, and the way Nicky’s face had turned bright red halfway through his own ice cream cone was an excellent addition. His high pitched involuntary hiccups started moments later, and she had to duck with a giggle when Nicky dug out a frozen chunk of dough to fling into her hair.

She didn’t see the twist of misery that flickered across Nile’s face at the sight of the two of them play fighting.

\--

“There’s still a little bulge right…” Andy glanced over her shoulder to figure out where on Nile’s dark blue suit jacket Nicky was looking, and deftly gave the heavy fabric a brisk shake and tweak to make it fall smoothly over the concealed swords. “-There. Perfect.”

“Thanks for helping, guys.” Nile was even quieter than usual as she reached back to pull her head full of tiny, sleek braids into a tight ponytail, and Andy frowned at how Nile was still drooping in spirit, if not body. “What time did Booker and Joe say they were getting in?” 

“They said they should be in just before noon.” Even if the kid hadn’t been in a growing relationship with at least one of them, there still was usually more enthusiasm at the thought of seeing them. “Are you sure that you’re feeling okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just been a long week at work, and the humidity is killing me.” Nile still didn’t make eye contact with either of them as she zipped her new shoes on in her final preparations for getting out of the apartment. “Not literally, mind you. Even Afghanistan wasn’t this damn wet, but at least I’m not tripping over camel spiders anymore.”

“Guess we may as well get going, then.” Nicky shrugged at Andy on the way out of the door when Nile couldn’t see his gesture. At least they would have plenty of time to talk about what the real problem was when everybody got off work.

\--

It had been four and a half hours since Nile had started work, and try as they might, neither Nicky or Andy could see or figure out what was upsetting Nile so badly. Hell, they hadn’t even seen unwanted photos of anybody’s genitalia all day.

“Are you thinking about doing a lunch run?”

Andy took another quick look through her own scope at Nile. She was still raking in compliments about her carefully tailored navy suit, and she was still steadily gathering the information they needed on Max. She was probably fine.

“I’m going to take a quick run up that building two blocks east of the office first to see if the angle is any better from there, and then I’ll go grab some sandwiches.”

“Mmhm.” Nicky shifted slightly from where he had his rifle braced on the dusty windowsill, and twitched his free hand in farewell as Andy loped out of the room on her way for the elevator. 

There was a crackle of static in Andy’s earpiece once she stepped onto the cracked pavement, and she grinned as she heard Booker’s slightly breathless voice come through clearly.

“I changed my mind. I thought I couldn’t take another hour of being stuck in that fucking truck, but I was wrong. Nobody would kick up a fuss if I used my sniper rifle to keep an eye on whateverthefuckit’scalled from the parking lot, right?”

“We really should’ve done more cardio on the drive down.” Joe was panting almost as heavily as Booker, causing Andy to snicker as she started jogging to her destination, which was only a few blocks away.

“Elevator’s broken?”

“Yeah. We’re on the fifteenth floor, and we’ve got eighteen more of them to go.” Everybody heard Booker’s wheezing in overly vivid detail before he got his breath back enough to speak. “Boss, you might want to keep an eye out for a weird yellow van that we saw when we parked the truck.”

Andy made a noise confirming that she had heard him, and picked up the pace. She thought she saw the bumper of an appropriately creepy van go screeching around a corner a few blocks away from her, and Andy paused to look for a marker so that she could write down the license plate.

She heard the sound of frantically whirring bicycle wheels as she scribbled down the information on the back of her hand, and she obligingly took a few steps closer to her chosen building so the person could easily get past her. 

The thin scream of rusty bike brakes being forcefully put to use along with the distinctive sound of sneakers scrabbling to a stop on pavement finally made her look up, and she raised an eyebrow at the bike messenger who was radiating excited earnestness out of his pores.

He was cute enough in a beefy, blue eyed, and blond sort of way, and Andy strongly suspected that without her sunglasses his neon yellow and red outfit would be a lot more offensive and blinding than it already was. Well, maybe if she got the greeting part of this out of the way, her afternoon might continue smoothly.

“Can I help you?”

“I just wanted to tell you that your boots, actually your whole outfit and the-” He made a wild gesture that seemed to encapsulate his whole head, and she could already hear Booker making a pained noise over the comms at having to listen to the brief conversation. “-Hair and your leather gauntlets seem really cool in a murderly, badass, Xena warrior princess sort of way. Bye!”

Andy could blink as the tsunami of blathered compliments washed over her.

“...Thanks?”

He was already biking away as fast as he could go before she managed to get the entire word out. She barely managed to resist the urge to shake her head like a wet dog to see if it would make the mad scramble of words make more sense as she broke into the vacant building.

She had only reached the third floor by the time she heard the unmistakable sound of the strange man singing a great song extremely poorly. 

“Does he really have to mangle Journey like that?” There was a sudden burst of voices she didn’t recognize in her ear, and Andy abruptly froze midstep. “Guys, why can I still hear him?”

“Pretty sure we’re not the only ones infiltrating Goliath Worldwide Entreprises, anymore.” She almost didn’t catch Joe’s stony voice over the confusing babble of a dozen different voices all speaking at once, and she found herself bracing her head in her hands as he suddenly slipped into brisk Italian. “There’s somebody on the floor above us. I’m going up now.”

Nicky and Booker’s voices joined the chaotic mess of noise, leaving Andy to clench her teeth as she tried to isolate any words or names that would be somewhat helpful in the sudden clusterfuck that was playing out into her ear. She caught a brief snatch of something about the head of Human Resources, and an awkward compliment about a dress before she lost the stream of information again.

“Look, I know this probably doesn’t look great-” There was a sound of somebody getting violently hit in the head with a blunt object over the comms, and Andy immediately started sprinting for the stairs when she recognized the sound of somebody running for their life. 

She was sure it wasn’t any of her team outside the building, but Nile was still up there with whoever was stealing their hard won information out from under them.

“Jensen, circle around the north side of the building.”

Nicky made a small frustrated noise, and Andy automatically knew that the messenger must’ve had either too much cover, or was just moving too fast for Nicky to get a decent look at him. There was a series of frantic clicking noises over the line, and Andy prayed that Booker had eyes on the stranger, since it sounded like he was by the elevators.

She wasn’t paying attention to any of the desperate things that the stranger was saying as she scrambled down the stairs, and Andy could feel her blood freezing over as she heard two quiet pops of gun fire.

“I’ve found the enemy sniper. Fuck, he’s going to shoot again-”

“Jake?” 

Nile’s quiet voice was a sudden spot of calm in the middle of all the confusion going on, and Andy numbly noted the fact that she had never heard the youngest immortal ever sound so hopeful and happy before. Like she was finally getting to go home, and everything was going to be okay.

“Nile-”

The deafening roar of a gun being fired at point blank range didn’t stop Andy from hearing Nile’s throat being blown out, and she could hear Nile choking to death on her own blood through her ruined windpipe like she was standing right next to her.

There was a horror struck pause for a few heartbeats, before the vicious sounds of a quick fight mixed with that of Nile dying as she got dragged somewhere.

“I’ve got the other sniper taken down. Is she-”

“Andy, he’s taking Nile.” Booker’s voice sounded remarkably steady as he interrupted Joe. “If you hurry, you might be able to catch him first.”

Andy wasn’t one hundred percent sure herself on how she managed to sprint out of the building’s lobby in what felt like seconds later, but the shrieking pain in both of her legs certainly suggested that she had opted to fling herself over and drop down two stories worth of stairs.

“Fuck!” She hissed through her teeth as she yanked a handgun out of her hip holster before falling into a firing stance that came as easily to her as breathing. “Is that van the right one?” The familiar yellow van was fishtailing away from the building in a cloud of burning rubber, and Andy could already hear the faint sounds of Nile coming back to life.

“Yes.”

Andy fired once at the barely visible head of the driver through the front windshield, but she didn’t get a chance to find out if she had managed to kill him when the van swerved towards her with a screech of its tires. She flung herself out of the way of the careening vehicle in a hasty move that resulted in her knee immediately snapping out of place as the van skidded by her. 

She couldn’t stifle the scream that ripped out of her at the instantaneous flood of agony, and lost precious seconds as the van barreled around a corner a few streets away that none of her team could get a decent shot or look at. Gone. She was gone.

Nile had just been taken away from them, and it was all her fault. Andy howled in grief and pain as she bled onto the hot pavement with tears running down her face. What had happened to Booker was going to happen to Nile, and Andy had no way of stopping it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, everything is going to turn out fine at the end, I promise. Until then, I'm still going to cram some angst and bantering in there. Also, as fun as it is to see everybody writing Nicky as all poised and refined, I decided that in matters of food, he is the trashiest dumpster fire that ever burned. That, and being an Olympic gold medalist in the art of creative swearing.
> 
> Speaking of which, the next chapter will be from his point of view.
> 
> Thanks for all the lovely words of encouragement, and please comment if you liked this, or even if you want to swear at me about the cliffhanger!


	5. Things Go From Bad To Worse To Fantastic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group finds out unexpected information about Nile and her family, and Nicky really enjoys sexually putting Booker and Joe through their paces. Ugh, fine, the new guy can stick around.

The awful, tortured animal noise coming from Andy didn’t stop, even after their shared frequency abruptly switched back to just the sound of Booker and Joe breathing while Andy screamed like her heart was being pulled from her chest. The chaotic noise of the strangers speaking to each other popped out of existence like it had never happened. His throat and chest hurt. He must’ve forgotten to breathe again. 

Nicky’s hands trembled as he pressed his own palms roughly against his diaphragm to make sure it was actually moving while he deliberately forced himself to start breathing again. After all, it was one of his prefered methods to confirm that he was still alive, and not just a trapped spirit doomed to roam the Earth. Joe always hated his occasional inability to bring Nicky out of his occasional delusion that was usually brought about by shock, and could only helplessly weep as Nicky tried to mentally reorient himself on the mortal plane.

“Nicky, are you still there?” Booker’s voice sounded deeply worried as he spoke through his ear piece.

“Yes.” Nicky sank his teeth into the muscle of his palm, and gave it a brief shake as pain flared up as a secondary confirmation to his physical state. He always hated using that method as evidence, but he had already burned through his luxurious thirty seconds of freaking out, and had to get a move on. “I’ll go get Andy. Are you and Joe dealing with the sniper?”

“Oui. I can hear police sirens coming.”

Nicky cupped his hand over his eyes as the elevator shot downwards, taking his last few seconds of available weakness before he had to pull himself together and act like he wasn’t terrified out of his mind for Nile and his family. He had already erased any and all evidence that he and Andy had ever been in the building before gathering their weapons on autopilot, rather any conscious thought on his part.

“There’s something wrong with my leg.” Andy’s pained keening had finally died off into shaking, hoarse gasps, and she must’ve been able to sense the flash of panicked horror that ricocheted through the group, because she hastily spoke again. “Everything’s still attached. It’s not bleeding or anything, but it hurts too much to move.”

Nicky’s brisk lope immediately turned into a controlled run at the news, and he mentally berated himself as he stumbled against one of the building’s walls. Why they had ever thought that spreading everybody out so far around Goliath Enterprises was a good idea when Andy could be eyeing up her final death at any moment was beyond him, along with Nile’s location and well being. 

Her immortality better not be a fucking fluke, or he was going to burn the entire universe down to ashes.

“Don’t move until I get there, Andy.”

“No shit.” Andy sounded reassuringly sarcastic even as she panted in pain over the comms. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

Of course, when he finally managed to locate her a scant minute or two later, she was already trying to drag herself and her grotesquely swollen leg backwards across the hot sidewalk and into a filthy alley. Nicky finally started breathing again without having to force himself to do it. 

“Would it have killed you not to move for three fucking minutes?”

Andy gave him a blistering glare that would have set him on fire if the rules of science had any real sense of honor or appropriate timing. Well, he might have deserved that one.

“I’ve got nine hundred years of jokes about death and dying built up, Andy. One was bound to pop out eventually.” Something was deeply wrong with her leg, even as Nicky tried to visually block out the swelling while he dropped into a crouch in front of her. “Any idea on what’s wrong, exactly?”

“It has something to do with my knee on that side. I’m not sure beyond that.” Andy was breathing in shaky little huffs, and Nicky automatically reached out to dab at the sweat coating her gray face with his shirt sleeve. He wasn’t brave or stupid enough to venture at touching her injured knee in their increasingly unsecure location, but he still had to get Andy out of there without jolting her leg. Andy must have been puzzling over the same problem, because she quietly offered a solution.

“You could just drag me by my armpits. I mean, the truck isn’t parked too far away-” Nicky growled as he flicked one of Andy’s ears for her terrible suggestion. “Fuck! Piggy back ride, then, you fucking asshole. Gimme your gun, and I’ll try not to shoot you in the foot.” 

Finally, a halfway decent plan.

They exchanged biting, half hearted barbs in a futile attempt to distract themselves from the long, painful process of getting Andy onto his back and finding the right spot to put his hands so that she wouldn’t be jostled or in too much pain. It helped having her warm, solid body plastered against his back, even if her chin was excessively bony and she kept jabbing at his ribcage to make him walk faster.

“It sounded like Nile recognized the man who took her.”

Nicky hummed in agreement at Andy’s quiet murmur, more focused on eluding witnesses and law enforcement as he jogged through the maze of dingy back alleys in a route that would eventually lead them to Booker and Joe than coming up with a better response.

“He wasn’t her brother, that’s for sure.”

“Old boyfriend, maybe?”

A small, irrational spike of jealousy sparked in his chest for a moment or two before he tamped it down. What he and Joe had with Booker and Nile was barely past the area of daydreams and fantasy, and he wouldn’t dream of trying to tell them who or what they did with other people. Still. The bike messenger had been cute enough from the glimpses that he saw through his scope.

Even if the bike messenger didn’t have anything on Booker’s razor sharp wit and joy when the moment struck him right, Joe's nearly bottomless well of imagination and intelligence, and Nile’s fierce compassion and nerve.

Plus, he defintely didn’t want to fuck and be fucked by the bike messenger so hard that that all parties involved would walk strangely for a week, supernatural healing or not.

“Have you ever been that happy to see any of your former bedroom companions?”

“Absolutely not.” Andy was twisting against his back as she looked up at the skyscrapers backing into the alley they were in. “Actually, I’d be happy to see Quynh, if we ever meet her again before I permanently start pushing up daisies.”

“Well, that would certainly be a happy surprise for everybody.” Nicky couldn’t help but smile at the sound of Booker’s familiar, yet brittle voice. “I’m coming down with our mystery sniper on the next block up from you. Mind the glass.”

Broken glass cascaded down from the top of a neighboring skyscraper into the alley in front of them, and it had barely stopped raining down glittering shrapnel when Booker swung out from the building in a graceful arc, with both his rappelling gear secured snugly around his pelvis and an unconscious stranger tied to his back.

Booker had always been gorgeous in mid-air, and a hungry, lustful noise slipped from Nicky before he had a chance to stop it. Booker’s immediate, startled glance downwards over lapped neatly with Joe’s warm laugh, since he knew perfectly well what kind of mood tended to bring out that noise in Nicky.

“Have rope, will travel?”

Andy’s greeting came out in a pained whine, and Nicky looked back at her wide eyed face before reaching back to rest his palm against her cheek. Sweat was sluicing down his back as he moved, and even he couldn’t figure out who was producing more of it as Booker lightly touched down with a small crunch.

“Pretty much.” Booker turned to them after he sent his harness back up for Joe, and started striding down the alley towards them in the long, prowling walk that Nile gleefully referred to as his Murder Strut. Even in the privacy of his own mind, Nicky still recognized and acknowledged that particular saunter of Booker’s deserved all the capitalization it could get. 

He seemed amazingly calm despite the stressful situation, and Nicky had to wonder what had changed in him so quickly as Booker instinctively blew a lock of the stranger’s long brown hair out of his own eyes in a move that was an obvious hold over from when his own hair was long enough to bother him in the same way.

“I’ll see if there’s anything in the truck that can help with your leg when we get there, Andy.” Booker stooped slightly to firmly kiss the side of Andy’s head with a gentle squeeze of Nicky’s arm before starting to turn away to watch Joe’s descent down the building. A pang of longing hit him, and Nicky arched up on the balls of his feet to teeter forward enough to kiss Booker before he got too far away. 

Their kiss was sweet, tender and about two minutes shorter than he really wanted it to be, since his hands were fully occupied with carrying Andy and there was the fun little bonus of accidently bumping head with the man Booker still had flung over his back.

“Can you two do this fucking later?” 

Andy balefully glared at them from the extremely close range of Nicky’s shoulder, and he privately vowed to do a better job on their second kiss.

“You’re such a spoilsport, Andy.” Joe’s sunny smile and demeanor were visibly cracking around the edges as he swanned his way towards them from where he had just touched down in the alley. He jabbed a finger in the direction of Booker’s captive as he passed by on his way to Nicky and Andy. “He’s not the one who shot Nile, by the way. Booker said one of the security guards was already panicking when she walked in, and well…”

Nobody was at their best when they were panicking, more so when that person had a gun. Nicky accepted a quick peck from Joe, and patiently waited for him to finish fussing over Andy before speaking,

“Okay.” If that was what Booker said happened, Nicky was willing to fully believe it. “Hopefully he’ll have some information on why his team thought kidnapping Nile was a good idea.”

Joe hummed in agreement as he peeled Nicky’s sniper rifle off of Andy’s back to add to his collection of assorted weaponry before nodding at Booker to lead their relatively slow, painful charge back to their mud splattered truck. There was a large issue that was only brought to light once Booker had managed to successfully cram both their captive into the truck’s back seat and all of their weapons into any free leg space left in the front.

“Where’s Andy going to sit?”

Any bending of her leg had been a definite no go so far, so riding in the passenger seat wasn’t going to happen. Everybody had refused to even entertain the idea of stacking her on top of the Latino stranger, who was already taking up a surprising amount of room. Booker made a thoughtful face at the empty truck bed before glancing at them. Oh no.

\--

“Fuck!” 

Nicky fully agreed with Andy’s pained shriek as they both slewed across the truck bed when Joe whipped the truck around a corner a little too sharply for Nicky and Andy’s comfort. Up until then, riding in the truck bed hadn’t been too bad as Nicky only had to yell the occasional direction at Booker though the open back window of the truck while keeping Andy still. Granted, the couple of pot holes the truck had lurched through hadn’t been very comfortable for either of them before things really got going.

Joe had unfortunately caught wind of oncoming emergency vehicles halfway to the apartment, and now they were stuck in a hellish reenactment of one of the video games Andy occasionally played when she needed to get a bit of frustration out in a harmless outlet.

Nicky frantically scrambled backwards as best as he could with Andy clutched to his chest, and managed to flail his free arm around enough to precariously hook his fingernails in the shallow lip of metal below the truck’s back window. He was deeply regretting turning down Joe’s mostly serious offer of tying them down with a ratchet strap that had been rattling around in the back of the truck, even if their apartment couldn’t possibly be too far away by now.

“Well, at least my leg doesn’t feel any worse than when we first got in here.” Andy looked like she was trying to smile at him through her clenched teeth as the truck roared around another street corner. Nicky winced as he curled his legs up under her bad knee in an attempt to give her a little more support, since his balled up jacket had gotten dislodged once Joe had started going past the speed limit. “You know, I’m pretty sure the team that took Nile are also after-”

The truck screamed forward in a plume of black exhaust, and Nicky’s flimsy grasp snapped under the sudden pressure as the truck’s momentum sent both of them skidding towards the raised tailgate. Nicky instinctively curled his body around Andy’s infinitely more fragile skull, and had just enough time to brace his hands around her neck before his back slammed into the solid metal with a crunch that radiated a sharp pain through his spine and tailbone.

“Ow.” A bubble of his bright red blood burst over a strip of Andy’s exposed stomach from his pained exhalation, and he was too busy mentally tallying up his possible punctured lung and broken ribs to remember to get more follow through on what Andy had just been saying. He faintly heard Booker yelling something at Joe just before the truck ground to a somewhat graceful stop.

“Habibi, are you holding up okay back there?”

Nicky wetly hissed through his teeth at Joe’s far too late call of concern, and he gratefully patted Andy’s back as she flipped both of her middle fingers up for him at his darling, beloved husband who was going to be forbidden from driving for a while. God only knew what poor Booker must’ve been put through if Joe had been driving for the lion’s share of the last week.

\--

“Can you hold his eyes open a bit for the picture?”

“Come to think of it, Booker, every single passport photo I’ve ever had taken had somebody else both holding my head up and eyelids apart.”

Making Booker laugh hadn’t been his original intention when he had snapped at him while trying to keep the stranger’s head upright in the photo that Booker was trying to take, but he would take whatever minor victory that he could get. Booker quickly took the picture before doing something to his phone in a blur of fingers.

Booker had already been a veritable flurry of activity ever since everybody had managed to drag themselves upstairs to the apartment, and even Nicky found himself being unable to tell if Booker was actually coping with Nile’s kidnapping as well as he was projecting or not.

Booker had immediately spent a few hasty minutes on the building’s wifi before hustling Andy onto her bed and shoving enough pillows under her wounded leg that it made her look like she was trying to do a horizontal high kick. He had promptly followed that up by bustling off to the kitchen before packing all of their frozen food around Andy’s injured leg with a strict order for Joe to make sure she didn’t move and make anything worse.

He had then grimly approached their unconscious house guest with slightly shaking hands after taking his photo and sending it off to see what information Copley’s database could dig up on him. It hadn’t taken Nicky long to figure out the source of Booker’s sudden discomfort, since he had then started the most gracious and respectful search for weapons on the other sniper that Nicky had ever witnessed.

After all, Booker wasn’t keen on physically manhandling people who couldn’t consent to it, even more so when they hadn’t even tried to shoot him in the face first. Still, the Frenchman was apparently ready to be amazingly thorough in his search if it could potentially keep Andy alive. 

Mind you, Nicky still wasn’t entirely sure why Booker’s latex clad fingers were feeling around in the handsome man’s slack mouth. Booker shook his head at Nicky’s questioning noise while he watched the tendons twitch in the back of Booker’s hand as he moved his index finger back and forth in search of something.

“Dish, please.”

Nicky obligingly held out the battered casserole dish that Booker had been dropping the discovered concealed weapons into for the last five minutes. Something metallic sounding dropped in on top of the mess of bare razor blades, wire garrottes, slim stiletto knives, and the bright pink butterfly hair clip that Booker had included out of sheer paranoia. 

Nicky squinted for a moment while he rattled the tray in order to figure out what Booker’s latest inclusion to the collection had been before sighing in defeat.

“What was that?”

“Very, very small lockpicking kit. He had it tucked right in,” Booker helpfully pulled his own upper lip back to point at the same spot above his own teeth. “-Right above the ridge of his gum line. He’s obviously had it there for a while, because there’s scar tissue where he’s been holding it in place. It’s a very clever move on his part.”

“Do you think he’s American military?”

“Well, it’s a definite possibility. We should know more-” Booker’s phone vibrated on the nearby coffee table even as he spoke. “-Now, I guess.” Nicky kept close watch over the undoubtedly dangerous man as Booker stood with a sigh to read the information sprawling across the screen of his phone.

“He’s formally Black Ops. Carlos Alvarez, American national. Thirty seven years old, born to Mexican parents. Long-Range Elimination Specialist. He was apparently killed eight and a half months ago along with the other four members of his team while trafficking child drug mules in Bolivia. He has four surviving siblings, both older and younger, and ten nieces and nephews. Very interesting.”

If Nicky hadn’t been watching so closely, he probably would’ve missed the way Alvarez’s sharp jaw tensed for just a moment at Booker’s mention of the children mentioned in his file. Otherwise, it was a splendid job at feigning sleep as he sprawled bonelessly in his chair. Nicky silently alerted Booker to the change of Alvarez’s alertness, and made sure the tray of confiscated weapons were well out of reach.

“The circumstances that they died in doesn’t add up with their previous history, though.” Nicky nodded slightly as Booker handed off his phone so that Nicky could skim through the mountain of information still flooding into the small device. “That being said, I don’t suppose you have any dazzling insights on why your team abducted a member of ours, Alvarez?”

One of his suspicious, almond shaped dark brown eyes cracked open at being addressed directly. Nicky idly noted that the pupil on that side seemed to be a normal size and was easily tracking them as they moved.

“No, not really.” His heavily accented voice creaked rustily as he spoke, like he was unused to speaking out loud as his other eye opened with a blink. “Any chance that I can have my hat back?”

“Of course.” Booker cautiously circled behind the other man to gently place the obviously well loved leather cowboy hat back on his head. “Is this angle working for you?”

“A little more-” Alvarez’s shoulder arched up in an instinctual attempt to fix it, before dropping it back down as Booker delicately nudged the hat into the asked for spot. “Perfecto. Gracias.”

“You’re welcome. I hope your head doesn’t hurt too badly.” Nicky smiled faintly as their guest shrugged in a way that seemed to perfectly communicate that there were larger issues at hand than his goose egg. “So, what’s the odds of your coworkers torturing and or sexually assaulting our teammate?”

Any possibility of the three of them relaxing further evaporated with Booker’s bluntly put question.

“We would never do that!” Alvarez venomously hissed at them as his previously amendible demeanor changed to insulted wrath in the space of a single second. “What would you do with my nieces and nephews if you had them in your grasp, since you seem so interested in them?” 

“We would rather skin ourselves alive before we harmed any child.” Nicky was sure the entire group would take it quite a bit further than that before the faintest possibility of that ever happening could even come up, and Booker’s steadily serious eyes bored into Alvarez’s uncertainly angry eyes. “You can take our word on that. We just want her back safely. You can understand that.”

“Si.” The suffocating tension filling the room bled off by a couple of degrees after a long pause, and Alvarez’s body language relaxed slightly. “We didn’t traffick those children in Bolivia. We were framed for it by a very bad man that we’re trying to find.”

“Who did it?” 

“It was obviously Max, you dumbasses!” Nicky dropped his face into his hands as Andy bellowed loudly enough to be heard from several rooms away. “Now untie him, and find out if he knows enough first aid to be helpful.” 

Alvarez gave Nicky a wide eyed stare of alarm as he cautiously spoke again.

“That is who we’re looking for.”

“Congratulations, we fucking hate that guy too. Do you promise not to stab anybody if we let you go?” 

Booker had apparently abandoned ship on keeping any sense of dignity to their interrogation, and was instead exasperatingly glaring at the both of them for the lack of more appropriate targets.

“Only if it turns out that your boss doesn’t need stitches.” Nicky gave him a puzzled look before Alvarez innocently shrugged. “She has a certain tone shared by those in command.”

“Is that the one that sounds like vaguely incoherent rage?”

“Yes, that would be the one.” 

Nicky shared a small smile with Booker and Alvarez as they heard the faint sound of a heavy object being poorly hurled at a distant wall. Well, at least they had the possibility of a stalmate on their hands for the next few minutes, and Andy was slightly less likely to murder them out of retalitation with Alvarez still in the apartment. He gave Nicky a mildly optimistic look as Booker set to untying him, and tilted his head at the dish of his weapons.

“Sorry, Alvarez. You’ll get them back when we can work out an exchange to get you back to your team.” Nicky grinned at Alvarez’s subtle look of surprise at the news of their intentions. “We’re hunting the same person, after all. When we get our friend back, we’ll consider it even.”

“Cougar. I prefer to go by Cougar.” Nicky caught a glimpse of Booker’s tiny smile while he turned away from them to stalk off to Andy’s room.

“Fair enough. I’m Nicky, and this is Booker. Are you ready to meet the boss?”

\--

It took less than a minute in Andy’s bedroom to make Cougar’s tan skin to blanch at the sight of her and say something shocking enough to make Joe’s eyebrows rise from where he was patiently waiting at her bedside. Nicky delicately coughed to cover the sudden, surprised silence before Booker quietly asked,

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Cougar just said that he wants to cut my jeans off.” 

Nicky could just make out the amused gleam in Andy’s eyes as she leaned back against Joe’s side, who was almost completely shrouded in the gloom of the dark room. “Isn’t that right, Conejito?” Cougar’s hat could hide a lot, but it couldn’t fully conceal the way everybody could see how he blushed at the spontaneous pet name and implication behind it. If Andy was feeling frisky enough to fluster relatively innocent bystanders, she might just be able to pull through this.

“Si, Loba. I’m worried that they might be cutting off the circulation in your leg.” Cougar paused for a moment, and Nicky once again got the feeling that he wasn’t used to talking so much. “Where’s your first aid kit?”

“We don’t have one. Just make a list, and I’ll run out and grab whatever you need.” Nicky cocked his head as Booker bent over Andy with one of his tidy, gleaming knives in hand before he stopped with a small frown. “Do you want shorts instead, Andy?” 

She wearily nodded, and both Nicky and Joe watched with keen interest as Booker smoothly sliced off one of the legs of her jeans in one smooth, gliding motion. Well, that was an interesting concept that Nicky had never particularly explored before with Joe. They’d have to talk about it later, when their lives stopped being such a shit show.

“I think you might have a…” Nicky looked up when Cougar stopped speaking, with half his attention already focused on helping Booker peel the panels of fabric away from Andy’s legs, only to find his fellow sniper squinting suspiciously at the ceiling. Cougar pointed a stern, reprimanding finger at the mess hanging from it. “What is that?”

“It’s just some scarves I hung up there to keep the room on the darker side.” Andy was all wide, innocent blue eyes as she propped herself up on her elbows. Nile and Booker had already tried to explain the fire hazard that particular habit was with her numerous times, and neither Nicky or Joe had the heart to explain to them that their heartfelt lectures were highly unlikely to change Andy’s mind in the slightest.

Nicky apologetically shrugged at Cougar’s concerned stare that Andy’s overly casual response had caused, and instead stood up on the foot of the bed so that he could gently peel the ball of scarves apart, which shed a little more light with every layer that he tugged away.

Cougar shook his head despairingly before he turned his attention back to Andy, but not without crankily grumbling in Spanish about how Andy was going to burn down the neighborhood, and how she was acting like a complete two year old about the possibility of it happening.

Andy and Booker were gleefully cackling about the sheer idea of it through Cougar’s cautious diagnosis of her right knee being laterally dislocated, and their snickering only died down when Cougar banished Booker to go fetch a certain type of knee brace and proper ice bags along with the strongest pain killers that he could get his hands on.

“Your blood circulation seems fine in your leg. Can you feel me touching your feet?” 

Nicky indulgently smiled as Joe excitedly nudged at his hip with one of his feet to draw Nicky’s attention to the way that Cougar had checked for that by firmly squeezing Andy’s big toe on her injured leg. His husband did love a good medical innovation when he saw one. 

Andy’s bodily reactions and answers must’ve been the correct ones, because Cougar had just finished shuffling her legs supporting pillows in an arcane pattern when Booker came jogging back into the room with Cougar’s requested items, his cheeks flushed a little with exertion from his shopping speedrun.

“You might want to take a few of those pills, Loba.” Andy definitely shook her head, and Nicky sighed at her stubbornness even as he offered her his hand to hold. Cougar then gave her one of the spare pillows with a pointed snap of his teeth. 

“Cougar, are you trying to make me bite pillows already?” Andy wolfishly grinned at him even as she clamped the offered pillow between her teeth.

“I’m starting to suspect that I’d be the one biting them. Try to breathe deeply for me, Andy.”

With that said, Cougar then adjusted his grip on Andy’s leg with a shimmy of his shoulders and a long exhale through his nose before he smoothly pushed at Andy’s dislocated kneecap with his cupped hand. It snapped back into place with a loud crack, and Nicky had to grit his teeth as Andy briefly screamed into her mouthful of fabric with a death grip on his hand.

“Easy, easy Loba. You’re doing so well.” Joe promptly joined Cougar in crooning soft, soothing things to Andy as Nicky stood up to give Booker and Cougar a hand in strapping her into the knee brace. Andy’s eyes were less wild with pain once the worst part was over with, and Nicky winked at her when she spat out her pillow before apologetically patting his hand. 

“Fuck, that hurt. Good work, team.” Nicky saw the way Cougar stilled at Andy’s praise, and mentally reminded himself that none of them could get emotionally attached to the quiet man. “Booker, any chance you can find us a Suburban or something along those lines? We’ve got to get the fuck out of here before we start looking for your girlfriend.”

“You can’t do that, Andy. You need at least two weeks of bed rest before you go anywhere.” Cougar was visibly aghast at Andy’s announcement of the group’s plan, and Andy promptly grinned at him, with all of her sharp teeth on full display.

\--

“Has Andy always been like that?” 

Nicky could barely hear Cougar’s voice over the furious downpour of rain that was beating down on them just outside the abandoned compound that was apparently housing the Cougar’s team. 

Honestly, he hoped that Joe was having better luck during his patrol of the building’s perimeter, since Nicky couldn’t see any further than three feet in front of him, and the rain had thoroughly massacred his clothing’s waterproofing dreams and ambitions mere seconds into his patrol. Regardless, it was pretty amusing that Cougar was still frazzled by Andy’s general refusal of letting other people tell her what she could do.

“For as long as we’ve known her. Joe, are you seeing anything we’re not?”

“I can see faint tire tracks heading away, but the rain is washing everything out.” Joe’s voice was thick with concern over the comms system, and he could almost taste his anxiety and dread while Nicky steadily sloshed through the clinging mud alongside Cougar. “Booker, can you see anything on the infrared scope?”

“Besides you three, I’m not seeing anything bigger than a rat in there.”

Booker was both holding down the fort, and guarding Andy in the gigantic, dark Suburban that he had managed to buy in a record breaking haggling session that had only lasted thirty minutes. The Suburban still had a faint whiff of new car smell, and Andy’s bedroom mattress wedged in the trunk for her convenience and comfort.

Nicky barely restrained himself from shivering at both the sense of impeding doom, and how fucking cold and wet he was while he cocked an eyebrow at Cougar’s barely visable form as he rasped out an answer to Nicky’s unspoken question.

“I was supposed to rendezvous here with them two hours ago. They wouldn’t have left without a good reason.” 

Cougar’s dark eyes were haunted and staring at somewhere else entirely when Nicky gently bumped his shoulder against the younger man’s in an attempt to comfort him. He didn’t know why or what happened, but he had never enjoyed watching somebody else suffering when he could do something about it. “Do you want me to sweep the building?”

Joe stalked into view around the far corner of the building as Cougar spoke again, and Nicky tried not to be too envious of how it looked like Joe’s ankle length poncho was still repelling water as his husband made his way towards them while dodging around alarmingly large rain puddles.

“It’s fine. We’ll go in with you. Do you think that your team would’ve set traps in the building on the way out?”

“No.”

With that, the three of them slipped into the eerily quiet building that held all the tell tale signs of being recently occupied and fled by humans, with skittering rats being the only active sign of life. That, and a full, sealed garbage bag tucked away in the kitchen that the rats had already broken into and were currently tearing apart.

Nicky was already glancing away from the sight when a shred of navy blue fabric in the pile of trash caught his attention as he moved his head. 

His heart lodged in his throat for the second time that day, and he dreaded the idea of what else he might find in that bag. Nicky hissed and stomped his feet in an attempt to get the large rodents to scatter before darting in around their furry bodies to grab the bag before retreating with it back to where Cougar and Joe were waiting for him.

The bag didn’t feel heavy enough to contain his darkest fears about what might’ve happened to Nile, and Joe silently sliced open the side of the bag with a knife he pulled out from under his poncho. The bloodied rags of Nile’s clothing flopped unceremoniously onto the stained concrete floor.

“That’s what she was wearing today.” If Booker and Andy said anything over the comms, Nicky’s ringing ears didn’t hear it. A thought struck him, and he frowned a little bit at the small detail as he hastily checked the rest of the trash. “Her shoes are missing, though. You two should check the rest of the building for any signs of her.”

Cougar hesitated for a moment, but he eventually turned to follow Joe deeper into the bowels of the empty building as Nicky tried not to make any audible noises of distress. He didn’t have the luxury of panicking, or letting his vivid imagination get any further down the grim rabbit hole it was in.

Cougar got back before Joe did, and Nicky could only purse his lips as he stared at the wooden baseball bat that he had brought back and mutely presented to Nicky. There was a small splotch of drying blood near the end of it with a few of Nile’s long, kinky hairs stuck to it. 

Cougar looked like he dearly wanted to apologize, and Nicky silently waved him off. He was barely holding back from screaming as it was, and if he had to verbally accept Cougar’s apology, it was going to come ripping out of him against his will.

Joe triumphantly yelled from the back of the compound, and Nicky was already loping towards the joyful sound of his voice before his mind fully caught up with his body.

The fact that Nile was no longer in the general vicinity was clear as day, but he was still holding out hope that she had found a way to communicate that she was, as she had once put it when she was still new to their company, not ‘Chopped Up Into A Million Mother Effing Pieces.’ Which, as Booker said at the time, would be a near perfect title for Andy’s written autobiography, even if Nile had been referring to Nicky’s salad making technique at the time.

Still, of all the things that could reignite Nicky’s hope about Nile’s well being, Joe barrelling down the hallway with a battered wooden chair tucked under his arm wasn’t particularly high on the list.

Cougar made a small, inquiring noise as he drifted after him on almost completely silent booted feet , and Nicky obligingly shuffled to the side to give him more room as Joe finally reached them and flipped the small chair upside down to show them the underside of the seat.

The wood was already half rotted away, which was most likely caused by neglect and Florida’s horrific humidity level, but it had obviously brought Nile a fair amount of pain to gouge the handful of blocky, erratically placed letters carved into the splintering wood. 

The tiny flecks of dried blood surrounding her handiwork was a pretty obvious explanation as to how she had managed to pull it off, and Nicky frowned as he tried to mentally fill in the words that she hadn’t been able to complete. It took a few seconds, but he eventually managed to translate ‘SFE W GRP HNT MX I LA’ into “Safe with group, hunting Max in Los Angeles.’

Nicky exhaled hard through his nose when he was finally able to stop looking at the one piece of evidence proving that Nile was still alive, with both disappointment and pride churning inside him. 

On one hand, Nile was just as equally capable and able to defend herself as the rest of her fellow immortals with some fairly impressive weaponry literally strapped to her back. On the other hand, Nicky had been completely terrified for the past three hours or so, and he desperately wanted his very small, vulnerable family in the same room as him without anybody freaking out or being traumatized for at least half an hour. He shook his head and shoved his inconvenient feelings deeper inside himself.

He was going to be fine.

\--

Of course, proving that to the people who knew him best was turning out to be immensely difficult. Maybe if he kept driving, and stuck it out for just a few more hours, Booker and Joe might finally get off his back and stop trying to get him to talk about it.

“Nick. Nicky. Nicolo.” Nicky glanced over at where Booker was inching closer to him across the front passenger seat with every repetition of his name, before quickly averting his eyes back to the road. It was bad enough with Joe, Andy and Cougar staring holes in the back of his head, he absolutely didn’t need to hear what else Booker was going to say in his repeated attempts to get Nicky to let them stay in a hotel overnight.

“Nicolo Matteo. Nicolo Matteo Giovanni.” The amount that he really didn’t want to find out how many false Italian middle names Booker had on standby was only slightly outweighed by the possibility of having to stay still long enough that he would be forced to deal with his own issues. 

Apparently Joe had come to the same realization because he promptly stretched his arm from the back seat to pointedly poke at the back of Booker’s shoulder. That, and a quick glance back at Joe apparently provided all the fuel that Booker needed for his latest negotiation technique before he lightly rested his hand an inch or so away from Nicky’s leg before speaking to him again.

Booker was miles better at reading Joe’s ancient, incredibly complex first language than he was at speaking it, but he managed to clumsily work his way through it as Nicky fought to keep from looking at him.

“Please don’t do this by yourself. It hurts us seeing you like this.” 

Of course, Booker tried to get fancy at the end of his heartfelt speech, and naively parroted something Joe liked to say when he was hornier than a rutting tom cat and was trying to inform Nicky of his current mood without everybody else hearing about it. After eight hundred years and change of hearing it from the other piece of Nicky’s soul tended to bring to mind all the previous memories associated with that particular threat/promise/warning, and push his body into readiness.

Suffice to say, his erection was already aching in the confines of his jeans while his cheeks burned by the time Andy burst into laughter in the back of the Suburban. A far amount of the embarrassment he was currently feeling was born from how childish he had been acting after centuries of knowing better, and that Booker had to plead with him on that account.

“You’re writing checks that you might have a hard time paying, Booker.” Well, Andy must’ve been feeling better if she was back to acting like her normal demonic self. “You’d probably have to do some stretching first, you know, limber up a bit.”

“What, did I mispronounce something?” Booker sounded hurt and dismayed at the unexpected reaction, and Nicky would’ve been the first in line to reassure him if he wasn’t busy imagining Joe and himself doing some very pleasurable and lust fueled things to Booker in gloriously vivid detail.

“No, you were fine.” Joe’s voice was muffled in a way that suggested that he had smashed his face against the back of Nicky’s seat. “Your accent’s getting better, by the way.”

“Thanks. What does the last part I said mean?”

Joe’s mournful little noise overlapped with Cougar’s curious one, and Nicky couldn’t help but wickedly grin as he smoothly pulled into the lane that would take him to the promising Holiday Inn he could see coming up on the side of the highway.

“Joe would love to explain it to you later, Booker. Cougar, you’re in charge of finding somewhere that will deliver food.” Nicky still felt a bit clammy and cold from the outdoor search for Nile, and he threw a small stipulation into his order. “Maybe order something spicy.”

\--

It turned out that it was pretty difficult fixating on all the shit going on in his life when it felt like his mouth was being set on fire by the delicious Korean food Cougar had managed to hunt down and order within five minutes of their booking a hotel room for overnight. 

Well, he was still fretting a bit, but his mouthful of a really tasty, really burny Yukgaejang was slowing him down by quite a bit. He had already managed to identify the garlic, gochugaru and scallions easily enough in the spicy beef stew, but the glossy, transparent noodles and grassy tasting bits of a green mystery vegetable were still throwing him for a loop. 

Andy would probably know what they were. His question for her came out in more of a whimpery gasp than actual words, but Andy clearly managed to figure out what he was asking from where she was primly sitting on her side of the bed that she was sharing with Cougar, because she paused for a moment or two from shoveling back her own food to to answer him.

“They’re sweet potato noodles.” Andy’s rosy face twisted in thoughtful consideration before she bobbed her head back down for another bite. “Pretty sure the green bits are some sort of fiddlehead, but I’m not entirely sure.” She suddenly pointed her scarlet stained chopsticks meaningfully at him. 

“Nicky, you should take a bath. Your back must be killing you after dragging me around this afternoon.” It was not. Andy then abandoned any attempt to be subtle with her next order. “Booker, Joe, the laundry needs to be done now.” Of course, the washer and dryer were both located in the bathroom, and Nicky was relieved for once that Andy had no qualms about ordering them around.

“Do either of you need the bathroom first?” Cougar firmly shook his head while he bent over his own take out container, and Andy would have no problem with barging in if she suddenly needed to pee. With that, Nicky decamped to the bathroom and the surprisingly large tub with Booker and Joe.

\--

Alright, Andy was a genius. She might also be tactless, bossy, and occasionally aloof, but she had managed to figure out that Nicky needed to be submerged in a hot bath that was just shy of blistering his skin while Booker and Joe bustled around each other in just their underwear ages before he could’ve orchestrated it. Things were turning around.

“Wait, wait, wait, there’s still some right-” Nicky smiled as Booker crouched next to Joe and tried to buff off a smeared word written in permanent marker across his husband’s hip with a dab of hand sanitizer. The word disappeared off Joe’s skin, and joined its kin to become another inky stain on Booker’s fingers. “There. Sorry, I didn’t realize that I had written so much.”

“It’s fine, Booker.” Joe was carding his fingers through Booker’s fine, straight hair while he twisted around to look at his own hip, and paused with a small smile of his own when he saw Nicky watching them. “I don’t mind you marking me up.” Nicky hid a grin behind his hand as Joe stroked a knuckle across the gold collar still wrapped around Booker’s neck, which promptly caused the back of the Frenchman’s ears to flush a fetching shade of crimson.

Even if they weren’t trying to tempt Booker and Nile into their bed, it still would’ve been a cooling balm to Nicky’s soul to witness the new ease Booker and Joe had with each other. All they needed was Nile, and they would finally be complete. 

“Nicky, are you okay?” His eyes burned as he glanced up at Booker’s quietly asked question, and couldn’t help but wince at their matching expressions of concern as they stared at him. He had thought that particular sniffle had been quiet enough to slip by their attention.

“I really miss Nile.”

Nicky wasn’t sure if he could actually ask them for the bizarre favour that might just ease the pain where his feelings of terror and grief were tightly packed down. He didn’t want to hurt Booker by asking for more than he could physically give, but Nicky thought that Nile would want him to be brave about it. With that, Nicky braced himself for rejection and asked his question in a way that hopefully wouldn't upset either Booker or Joe.

“Feel free to say no, but would the two of you please join me for a bath?” Nicky elaborated on his thought as Booker bit his lower lip with a quick glance at Joe. “Maybe some making out too, if you’d like to do that with us, Booker.”

“...Okay.” Nicky could feel his heart swelling a few sizes larger as Booker nervously fidgeted with his hands while he visibly steeled himself. “I think that would be nice.” 

With that, Booker quickly shucked off his boxer briefs off before dropping into the hot water with a hiss while he wiggled up against Nicky’s right side to leave Joe enough room to get in as well. “Jesus Christ, are you trying to cook lobsters in here? Seriously, are you trying to make me into Bouillabaisse?”

“Please, the only way he could make that happen would be if he accidently burned down a fish market next to the docks.” Joe was hopping a little on one foot while he tried to wrestle his way out of his own underwear while he snarking at him. Nicky felt himself stiffen a little at the sight of his husband’s sleek, shining body as he crawled into the bathtub more carefully than Booker had. “Mind you, Nicky would still eat the result by the shovel load.” 

“Fantastic. I guess it’s finally time to hire my divorce lawyer, then.” Nicky grunted as the addition of Joe’s broad set of shoulders turned the confines of the tub from pleasantly snug to uncomfortably tight. He experimentally squirmed onto his side to face Booker to see if it was anymore comfortable while Joe mimicked his pose on Booker’s other side. 

“Actually, I might need a fleet of them just to divide everything up evenly. I-” Nicky muffled an involuntary moan against Booker’s shoulder as his thigh accidently slipped and pressed up against Nicky’s half hard erection. “Fuck, Booker.” Nicky shivered as Booker let out a gravelly growl of his own while his thigh deliberately ground upwards against Nicky’s rapidly hardening cock.

“That sounds like a fun plan.” Nicky could almost feel the vibration on Booker’s skin as Joe dropped his head down to purr behind Booker’s ear while stretching to warmly cup Nicky’s hip with his large hand.

Booker shuddered with a sharp whine as he arched upwards under Joe’s deliberate scrape of teeth against his neck, and Nicky eased his arm under Booker to gently knead at his back while he slowly licked the outer edge of Booker’s collarbone to make him squirm again. Salty. Delicious. Uniquely Sebastien.

“Easy, my love, easy.” Joe’s eyes were almost filled with black from how wide his pupils had blown out as he peeked over the rise of Booker’s heaving chest at Nicky. “We’ve got to be careful with our pretty little Gattino.”

Booker’s hips instantly rolled against Nicky’s stomach as he let out a shaking mewl that Nicky wanted to pull out of Booker again and again. Apparently Booker was fully on board with being called their pretty little kitten, even if nearly everything else they wanted to do with him would have to be carefully talked through before anybody went through with it. Nicky was really looking forward to the idea of discussing it, along with the prospect of finally getting to peel Nile’s panties off.

“Does our sweet boy want us to play with him a little?” Booker’s eyelids had lowered half way out of pleasure while Joe murmured his question between sucking love bites onto Booker’s neck, and Nicky was pleasantly surprised at how much deeper Booker’s voice got when he was enjoying himself.

“I’d like to try kissing you again. Along with some other things if you two keep it above my waist.” Nicky made an encouraging noise while Booker paused for an uncertain moment with a flicker of nervousness showing in his eyes. “I don’t want to do anything that involves penetration yet. It’s nothing against you two, but I just…can’t. Maybe we can try when we get Nile back.” 

“Of course, Booker. We’d never do anything that you don’t want to do.” Nicky rolled onto his knees to cup Booker’s cheek while Joe solemnly nodded against Booker’s shoulder. He pushed his face more firmly into Nicky’s grasp, and he didn’t bother hiding his small shiver as the younger man sucked at the skin between his thumb and his index finger before softly murmuring,

“I’d like to see what you and Joe do together, though.” 

Well, that was a promising idea. Of course, the mechanics of something like that with three people involved was going to require some thought on Nicky’s behalf. He couldn’t think of anything better than kissing Booker to get the inspiration flowing.

Nicky carefully watched for any sign of discomfort while he straddled Booker’s hairy, muscled thigh in a attempt to get better access to Booker’s mouth, and smiled as his only reaction to Nicky’s erection digging into his hip was to get a double handful of Nicky’s thighs before dragging him in for a much filthier, slicker kiss than their first attempt that day.

Booker turned out to be amazingly skilled with both his teeth and tongue, and Nicky eventually had to sink his fingers into Booker’s disheveled hair while pulling his head away just to get some air as Joe stroked Booker’s stomach and chest. Booker had moaned throatily at the gentle pull of his hair, but Nicky had to actually swallow the younger man’s scream with another kiss when Joe’s fingers grazed his nipples.

“Your nipples are a bit sensitive, aren’t they?”

Nicky breathlessly grinned as Booker squirmed helplessly under Joe’s suddenly cruel fingers, and finally admitted to himself that wanting to see if Booker was actually going to start crying when Joe pinched his nipples might be a sign that he was a bad man after all. Booker’s skin was soon flushed pink all over from Joe’s less than tender ministrations, and Nicky wolfishly smiled as inspiration finally struck.

“Do you want to rub up against Joe’s ass a little, kitten?”

“Y-Yes, please-” Nicky swooped down to pull one of Booker’s brown, pebbled nipples between his teeth before he could get another word out, and wickedly sucked at it as the other man started begging for mercy in whimpering, broken French. A particularly hard rake of his teeth actually made Booker shriek against the muffling hand Joe had clasped lightly over his mouth, and Nicky reluctantly let go of his prize before Cougar or Andy could get alarmed.

“F-Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Ah, he was back to being able to speak English so soon. Nicky quickly licked Booker’s rapidly bruising nipple just to make him squeal as he flinched in Joe’s sturdy embrace.

“Now you’re just being mean to the poor cat, Habibi.” Joe had a devilish smile of his own as he slid out from under Booker’s quivering body. “Do you want Nicolo to give your nipple a little apology kiss, Booker?”

“God, both of you are fucking awful.” Booker was still shuddering as Joe carefully slid his ass into his lap, but he was smiling by the time Nicky glanced up to make sure that he was actually okay. “What’re you two thinking of doing next?”

“I’m going to deep throat Joe while he explains exactly what you said to me earlier in the car.” Nicky smiled sweetly at Booker’s stunned expression before dropping his head down to greedily suck his husband’s throbbing erection into his mouth before either of them could react.

It wasn’t necessarily his smoothest work as he struggled to sink further over Joe’s twitching cock. Which was mostly due to being almost a complete month out of practice and lingering stress keeping his jaw from relaxing completely as he choked a little around the wide girth of Joe’s member. Joe made a tortured, pleading sound as Nicky consciously tried to relax his jaw and mouth, and he couldn’t help but purr around his mouthful of hot flesh at the familiar sound.

Almost a thousand years together, and his beloved still sounded like he was dying a long, drawn out death everytime Nicky put his mouth on him. It happened to be heavenly ambrosia to the possessive, jealous and mildly sadistic part of him that Nicky usually tried to tamp down outside of the bedroom for the sake of humanity and continued world peace.

Booker made a sound almost as pained as Joe’s had been, and Nicky braced himself with a hand on both of Booker’s thighs as he pushed himself until he managed to swallow Joe down to the root of his velvety skinned cock with a long moan of his own.

He was keenly aware of his rapt audience keenly watching his every movement as he tried to adapt to the intrusion, and Nicky took a few blissful seconds to float in the dreamy pleasure of taking care of Joe while he buried his nose in his neatly maintained pubic hair.

“Jesus, you two are gorgeous like this.” Booker’s hoarse voice shook with emotion, and Nicky arched his back when he felt Booker’s trembling fingers gently comb through his hair next to where Joe was resting his hand. “Are you two still sure that-”

Nicky growled at the familiar sound of Booker’s self doubt acting back up, and he flicked his eyes up to make steely eye contact with Booker as he slowly sucked his way back up Joe’s cock while he shook underneath him.

Booker and Nile were going to belong to them, and they would know how fiercely they were loved even when Nicky and Joe died their final deaths. They were going to burn away every unwanted touch Booker and Nile ever suffered through, and brand them instead with unending adoration and desire so that they would never fucking forget what they deserved for their every waking moment.

Nicky was pretty sure that Booker got at least some of his unspoken message, because he was holding his breath while he watched Nicky rise with very wide, very blue eyes. Nicky pulled off of Joe with a loud, lewd popping noise, and he straightened up enough to grab Booker’s chin and pull him closer so that he could clearly hear Nicky as he raspily purred into his ear,

“We will always love you, and don’t you dare forget that.” Booker quivered in his firm grasp, and Nicky swiftly dropped a quick kiss on the delicate shell of his ear. “I want to see what you look like when you’re coming on Joe, Sebastien.”

Nicky could hear Booker and Joe shakily exhale almost in unison as he sank back down to start blowing Joe in earnest as he pulled out every little trick that Joe liked while pulling his hips closer with a muffled, hungry moan. The first touch of Booker’s hands over his own caught him by surprise, but all it took was a quick glance at his lovers' faces to figure out what they were planning, and the first rough, guided shove down his throat that moments later wasn’t a surprise at all.

Nicky lost track of how much time was passing as Booker forcefully pushed Joe’s hips with his hands in order to ram his cock down Nicky’s throat while grinding against Joe’s ass. Nicky hazily found himself drooling saliva and precome as Joe shakily translated the phrase Booker that had said earlier in strangled snippets of words while Joe’s natural composure started eroding as he inched closer to climax.

He could’ve happily stayed right where he was for hours on end as the three of them perfected their rhythm together, but Booker was quietly starting to keen while twitching in tense little spasms, and Joe didn’t look very far behind him. 

Nicky would hopefully get the chance to spend as much time that he wanted to eventually get Joe, Booker and Nile strung out and weeping as he wrung orgasm after orgasm out of them until they either forgot their own names or just couldn’t take it anymore. It probably wouldn’t take much more than a long weekend and a generously sized bucket of lube. He gleefully smiled at the thought while Joe shakily kneaded at his scalp as he was forced to continue pounding his cock down Nicky’s throat. It would be so much fun. For him, at the very least.

“P-Pleeease, please, please-” Nicky glanced up at the first words of English that Booker had managed to gasp out in quite some time, and felt his heart melt at how the red faced younger man was frantically squirming and twitching behind Joe in a desperate attempt to stave off his climax.

He really was a sweetheart for trying, but Nicky would rather watch him orgasm than try and fight it back. Nicky tugged himself off of Joe’s leaking cock so that he could lick at Booker’s hammering pulse in his neck before slurring around his aching jaw,

“Please come for us, Booker…”

Booker wailed against the side of his head as he climaxed against Joe’s back, and Nicky dreamily draped himself over his two lovers for a few moments as he watched Booker quiver through the aftermath of his orgasm. 

He was just pulling away to attend to Joe again when he was abruptly yanked back against Joe’s chest as his teeth sank into the base of Nicky’s throat moments before he climaxed with Nicky’s name on his lips.

He jolted from the sting of the painful bite that set his nerves further ablaze past the haze of pleasure he had been in. Nicky faintly noticed the coppery scent of something hot sliding down his neck as Joe’s jaws tightened before he started stroking Nicky’s neglected cock.

He was so, so tired from the day that he had, and he dropped his head against Joe’s chest with a dismayed groan when he started softening as stress and exhaustion finally caught up with him. God damn it. At least Booker and Joe both got off, and he only whined a little when Booker sympathetically petted the back of his neck. 

“You can come on my face if you want to, Nicky.” 

The little brat smugly grinned at both Nicky and Joe as his bombshell of an offer fully registered with them, and he looked completely thrilled as Joe quickly rolled to the side so that Nicky could straddle Booker’s barrel chest while his rock hard erection bounced off Booker’s jaw.

“You look delicious like this, Nicky.” 

Nicky barely managed to hiss out a warning before he came with a whimper as his semen splattered across Booker’s blissfully pleased face. He managed to upright on his wobbly knees for just a few moments to commit the sight to memory before dropping next to Booker with a weak moan. 

“Fuck, that was fantastic.” Nicky sighed happily as he watched Joe lovingly clean Nicky’s semen off Booker’s face in gentle dabbing motions while Booker squirmed under him.

“I was going to eat that, Joe!”

Any lingering sexual tension in the air broke, and Nicky helplessly snorted with laughter at Booker’s tone of voice, which was the exact same one when he was scolding somebody for eating the leftovers he had stashed away for later.

“What, were you in the mood for Cream of Nicolo?” Tears of laughter were rolling down Nicky’s face by the time Joe wryly joked about it, and Nicky weakly smacked at Joe’s shoulder as he grinned down at Nicky and Booker.

“I think it was really more of a Consummation Of An Italian Wedding soup, personally.” Nicky gleefully giggled against Booker’s sweat covered chest at his own addition to the joke even as Joe and Booker groaned in mock disgust. He was pretty sure all three of them looked way worse than when they first got into the bathroom, but this was still the happiest moment that he got to share with them in quite a while. “Don’t worry, I’ll try to save some for you next time.”

“You better do that.” Nicky happily wiggled as they affectionately kissed him on his cheek and forehead, and squirmed closer while Booker rubbed his back before speaking again. “I do think we might have to actually take a real bath before we go back out there, though.” Nicky whined at the suggestion even as he kicked the bath plug away so that they could refresh the now lukewarm water. 

He had just finished applying some of their shared conditioner through his hair when he first heard the first discordant sounds of Andy and Cougar arguing in the hotel room. Andy’s voice was both sharper and louder than Cougar’s quieter protests, and all three of them tensed when Cougar’s plea for them to be left alone could be heard. 

Andy waspishly threatened something none of them could make out clearly, and Joe hastily tore the shower curtain off the rod to cover all three of them when Cougar quickly rapped on the bathroom door. Nicky defensively shoved Booker and Joe behind him as the other man stepped in and shut the door behind him in one movement before glancing over at them with wide, apologetic eyes.

“Lo siento. I’m so sorry, but Andy threatened to break her own knee if I didn’t tell you three right away.” Cougar’s normally deadpan expression had been washed away in a flood of visible fear and worry as he hastily spoke again. 

“I know Nile. Hell, I’ve spent holidays with her, and I’ve been on her family’s Secret Santa list for the last decade.” Nicky twitched in shock as Cougar shakily inhaled before looking at them again with pleading eyes. “I would’ve told you right away if I had known that she was the person you were looking for, since I’ve been dating her adoptive older brother for the last eight years. Jake. He’s the one who took Nile.”

“Merde!” 

Nicky thought Booker’s dismayed curse summed up the whole situation nicely, and thought it only got more apt as Cougar filled them in more with more details. Jake Jensen and his older sister Jessica had been swept under Nile’s parents' wings when they had been abandoned by their own abusive parents, and had been formally adopted by the Freemans when Nile was ten years old and Jake had been fifteen. 

Nile followed Jake into the military, and Jessica gave Nile’s mother a granddaughter called Beth shortly after. Cougar gingerly sat on the edge of the bathtub to show them proof of what he was telling them on Andy’s maltreated phone in a barrage of photos. 

A much younger version of the blond chatterbox was building sandcastles on a beach with an equally young Nile, along with two children who were obviously their siblings. Jessica graduating from high school, radiating pride as her younger siblings hung off of her. Nile doodling something on a cast wrapped around Jake’s leg with a fierce frown of concentration. 

A streak of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas photos where everybody got gradually older as they went on. Nile posing in a bright pink prom dress with a formally dressed Jake on her arm. Nile’s younger brother Tony posing with her, Nile’s mother and a swaddled Caucasion baby in a hospital room.

Booker gently took the phone from Cougar so that the three immortals could get a better look at the last photo. It had obviously been taken when neither Nile and Jake were watching in what might’ve been Afghanistan. They were tightly hugging each other in their full camouflaged tactical gear, with Nile’s toes barely sweeping the ground as Jake picked her up.

Nicky’s throat tightened as he realized all of that had gotten taken away from Nile in the span of two months, and his voice broke as he gave the phone back to Cougar.

“Is there any chance that you can pass us some towels to dry off with?” 

“You still have shampoo in your hair.”

“For fuck’s sake!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nicky is 100% THAT toppy bastard.
> 
> Thank you for all your lovely comments, and comment if you liked this!
> 
> The next chapter will be from Nile's POV.


	6. The Family That Got Left Behind.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nile reunites with another section of her chaotic, adoring family. She missed them all terribly, but it would've been nice if Jake Jensen wasn't so damned observant. There's also quite a few emotional moments in Walmart.

Jake. Jake, Jake, Jake-

Thoughts of him flooded her mind while her older brother frantically shoved his shirt against the cavern of ragged, bloodied flesh that used to be her throat. Her sense of smell was starting to fail as her body started shutting down despite Jake’s feverish pleas for her not to, and her nose crinkled at a familiar scent.

Jake smelled like he always did, but she could also smell the pear scented perfume that she had lost during one of the rare times when both of their layovers had overlapped. 

He had stubbornly maintained for years that it was Jess who had taken it, and not him. She had secretly always known that he had been the one who had stolen it, and now she finally had proof. Nile summoned a faint smile for the small victory as she died. It wasn’t a bad note to have her life end on.

\--

Her warm and fuzzy feelings had mostly evaporated by the time she came back to life in a crowded van that smelled of rancid junk food, unwashed bodies and fresh, coppery blood. There was a lot of yelling going on, which was mostly being provided by her traitorous and apparently still alive big brother.

“Pooch, move your fucking ass! If Nile dies because you can’t figure out where the mother fucking gas pedal is, I’m going to turn your head into a new soccer ball for Beth!”

She had almost forgotten just how loud Jake could be when he was roaring at full klaxon, which was made worse by it happening a few feet above her head. Which was mostly due to the fact that she had been deliberately trying to forget every memory of him for the last eight months or so.

“Good lord, your brother has a set of lungs on him! I really thought that he was going to pop your eardrums before you finished coming back to life. Which you are going to need in order to hear my proposition for you.” 

The stranger’s jaunty voice was coming from her still intact earwig, and Nile froze as his words finally registered. Nobody was supposed to know about her abilities. 

“Merrick was being a complete idiot with his idea about using your group to save the world, or whatever the fuck he kept yammering on about.”

It had to be Max. Everything she had learned about him came washing back to her, and she tensed under an icy wave of terror. He knew about them and everything that they could do.

“Good, you know when to be quiet. You know, I’d like to have a full set of immortal attack dogs kept on my leash, but I’d happily settle for one that volunteered for the job.” Max barked with laughter, and a whimper died in Nile’s throat at the sound. 

“Hell, you wouldn’t even need medical or dental. I’d probably get the most use out of you, anyway. Just imagine how much Joe and Nicky would hate you every time they had to decapitate some perfectly innocent civilians just because you wouldn’t play ball with me.”

Nile barely managed to stop herself from trembling as Max kept rambling on in his horrifically casual tone.

“Booker seems pretty damn depressed to start with, so I can’t imagine that he’d still look at you after he has to rip apart the Losers and their families. Do you think that he’d enjoy using your niece Beth for target practice? Little feet run fast and all that.”

Bile rose in Nile’s throat, and she gave a tiny shake of her head, unaware if he could see her or not. Max let out a pleased chirp that hurt her ear.

“Good dog. I can’t keep this frequency scrambled forever, so I’ll give you some time to think over my offer.” There was a smug, satisfied pause before he continued speaking. “This is what you need to know…”

Nile numbly listened as Max dripped his poisonous words into her ear one by one until he finally stopped talking. He finished by telling her that she had a few days before she had to come up with an answer for him. Nile felt dirty just having the things he said oozing inside her brain, and she wiggled her face into Jake’s shaking leg before her world went dark again.

\--

“-Sister, Clay!”

Oh joy, Jake was yelling again. Nile quietly sighed as she made a mental amendment to her first thought. Still yelling, since she doubted that he had even stopped to breathe, nevermind cease speaking for longer than a few seconds. 

She cautiously rolled her shoulders out as she blinked at the inside of the black canvas bag draped over her head. It wouldn’t have been Pooch or Jake who put it on her, but Clay or Cougar might have done it. Roque would’ve put it on her, but he probably would have made sure that she was getting enough air or offered her a drink by now. Nile could definitely go for one of Pooch’s fancy San Pellegrino's right now. 

“I understand that, Jensen! She still showed up totally covered in blood in the middle of our operation with two swords strapped to her back after she apparently died half a year ago!”

Fuck, she really had to get out of here. Max’s death threat to her brother and his team wasn’t concrete evidence that they hadn’t been using children as drug mules in Bolivia, but there was still no chance that she’d follow through on Andy’s advice about leaving a trail of bodies behind on her escape route out. 

After all, Jolene would probably find a way to keep her permanently down if she did anything to Pooch, and Cougar’s dry, scratchy stories about his and Roque’s massive families and their Matriarchs would give even Death itself second thoughts about making a move against them. 

Nile might just have to break a nose or two, flee, and pray that Copley was talented enough at keeping their information away from Jensen and his unholy abilities with most forms of technology and the internet. She’d also have to contend with his team physically hunting her down like a pack of cursing, highly creative bloodhounds that had loved and adored her for almost half of her life.

Her odds of success weren’t fantastic. 

“Nile died while I was holding her, Clay! You can’t really forget what your sister looks like when you've seen her spinal cord from the inside of her throat!”

She couldn’t let him see her go through anything worse than that. Nile tentatively squeezed her thighs together to see if her small sheathed knife was still in place.

Andy had snickered at poor, flustered Nicky earlier that day while she had been making sure that the knife tied to Nile’s inner thigh wasn’t showing underneath her clothing. Nile froze when a gun muzzle was abruptly jammed against the side of her head.

“Yes, I found that one too.” She couldn’t place where the woman’s lightly accented voice was from, but the overall impression formed from it was velvety, calm, and a bit impatient. “You should be sharpening it more.”

“Well, we can’t all file our vaginal teeth into points.” Nile grinned under her head covering when she heard Jake and Clay’s identical gasps of horror, and instantly got a better measure of who she was dealing with. “Making it gargle with mouthwash is bad enough, but I find that flossing it is really the worst part.”

“I believe they call that wearing a thong in most places.” The gun wedged against her temple didn’t waver in the slightest, but there was the faintest wisp of audible amusement that she wouldn’t have noticed if Nile hadn’t spent a third of her life watching Cougar around Jake. “I’m Aisha, by the way.”

“I’m Nile. How often does your vagina end up biting your gynecologist, anyway? Is he losing many fingers that way?”

“It mostly just snaps his speculums in half.” 

Nile could clearly hear Jake’s nervous laughter start up at Aisha’s dryly amused comeback, and Nile promptly started carving a message for her team into the bottom of her chair. Her first finger nail broke partly off halfway through the first letter, and Nile gritted her teeth at the sting of it growing back. She was going to have to move fast on this one.

“Great, great, great. Aisha’s finally growing an almost normal sense of humour, and my baby sister is talking about PAP smears and Aisha’s vagina. That’s perfect, really, just let me take that bag off your head and we can-”

Nile flinched as she heard Jake’s customary babble quickly moving towards her, and she instinctively hurled herself away from him before she remembered the gun resting against her head. Aisha made a startled noise at the sudden movement, and Nile was pretty sure her ‘N’ for ‘No Group’ got messed up when she jerked backwards.

“Clay, keep Jake away from me, or I won’t tell you a thing.”

Clay’s familiar sigh was a sad, weary thing before his gravelly voice spoke up.

“You heard her, Jensen. Get out. Go work over the algorithm or something else.”

“Clay, I can’t leave her, just let me-”

“Do you want me to get Roque to drag you out? Aisha, stand down for a minute.” Nile could just about feel Jake’s roiling worry as he resentfully retreated, and she steeled herself as she heard Clay’s battered dress shoes scrape to a stop in front of her.

“Close your eyes for a minute, Nile.” She obligingly squeezed her eyes shut as the bag lifted from her head, and waited for a few moments for the brightness from the sudden light to die off before she opened her eyes. Clay softly smiled at her as he gently swept one of his rough thumbs over her cheek. “Hi, Tiger. It’s good to see you again.”

Dad. Or as close as she had gotten since her real dad had passed away when she was eleven. Clay was scruffier, much whiter, and totally incapable of making wise romantic decisions around volatile people compared to her biological father, but her stupid, traitorous brain didn’t give a shit about the logistics of it.

He was her Dad in most of the ways that counted, and her eyes welled up with tears as she finally realized that she really needed a hug from him.

“Clay, I-” Nile choked around the rock hard lump in her throat, and she gasped for air as her eyes overflowed with stinging tears when a wave of grief and despair fully submerged her for the first time in months. “I’m s-so sorry that I d-didn’t-” 

Say goodbye. Forgive them. Get out of the military before she became a thing that just couldn’t die. Write enough fucking letters. Avoid becoming something that everybody was going to hate.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” The rope holding her in place fell away moments before Clay pulled her onto her feet and wedged her face into his sturdy, tobacco scented chest. Nile desperately clutched the back of his suit jacket as she wept a burning river of painful tears onto his creased shirt.

His holstered guns were digging painfully into her chest as he held her tighter to him, but she found that she could only sob harder as Clay started gently swaying on the spot with her. Nile was positive that she was creating a horrific mess on his shoulder, but each soothing stroke of his hand over her back only made her fall apart more.

“Come on, honey, you’re just holding out on me, now. Two little sniffs and that’s all you’ve got?” Nile gave in to his gentle verbal nudging and finally screamed her broken heart out.

His perpetual stubble was scraping against the top of her head, and her worn out heart twisted painfully as Clay dropped a soothing kiss to the top of her head. “That’s it, you’ve got it going now.” She felt his head momentarily lift off of her own before he settled back into place with a comforting hum. “You feel like putting up with Roque and Pooch going all brooding mother hen on you?” 

“A l-little bit.”

“Oooh, little bit, she says. Gettin’ all fussy as soon as she gets one near death experience under her belt.”

Nile let out a laugh that was more of a weak sob at the sound of Roque’s voice, and gratefully latched onto his gigantic frame as Pooch’s hand gently squeezed the back of her neck.

“I’ve been on plenty of battlefields and had tons of near death experiences before, Roque.”

His incredulous snort of disbelief ruffled her hair while she tried to permanently stamp the memory of what hugging them felt like into her brain. If everything went well, she’d soon slip her leash, and spend the rest of her lifetime trying not to imagine them dying of old age or anything worse. 

Jesus, no wonder Booker naturally leaned towards depression. It had been much easier for her not to give in to it when its eventual source wasn’t hoisting her off her feet in a bear hug and lovingly mocking her.

“Kindergarten doesn’t count as a battlefield or a near death experience, Nile. Why were you in that building anyway?”

Well, it was apparently time to go back to following her family’s standard operating procedure in the art of distracting conversation, which Jake was the reigning Crown Prince of. Baffle them with bullshit.

“I was getting paid to scold people for looking at porn during work hours. Were you a massive terror in kindergarten?”

“He’s only gotten worse over the years, woman.” Pooch gently nudged her chin up with a grease stained knuckle, and Nile forced herself to meet his warm, concerned stare. “Where’s your team, and who are they?”

“Jen from marketing, and I think she was talking about dragging everybody out for drinks and mini-putt golf after work.” Nile widened her smile, which was starting to feel more like an ill fitting mask than anything else. “It usually features bottomless margaritas and endless terrible decisions.”

“The swords you were carrying?”

“I got into Live Action Role Playing recently.”

Clay was covering most of his face with both of his hands as the relatively friendly interrogation went on, but the bits that were showing through looked deeply exasperated as Pooch and Roque both made frustrated noises.

“Why were you covered in blood? Cougar would never shoot you, and all the security guards were wearing Kevlar when he took them out.”

“I got carried away eating a really messy jelly donut. Or the weekly interoffice paint ball fight might’ve done it.” Nile wearily dropped back into her abandoned chair, and listlessly finished carving out her message into the splintering wood. “The printer’s ink cartridges exploded when I was trying to change them out. You know, the usual.”

“Why did you let our family think you were dead? Or did you just decide to abandon Mom and our family for kicks?” Jake’s words were bitten off and harsh, and Nile exhaled slowly through her nose as she glanced over to where he was standing braced in the doorway. Every bit of his body was closed off and tense, and she tried not to look at his wounded eyes. Jake always knew where everybody’s soft, vulnerable bits were located, and he was finally sinking the knives in. 

“You’re lying to us, Nile, and I’m going to find out why.”

It was time to drop the one bombshell that she could safely lose. Nile tried and failed not to flinch as she spoke.

“That algorithm you stole is going to tell you that Max’s base is in Los Angeles. Which is exactly where he is.”

Everybody exploded into the expected and planned for chaos, but Jake just looked so terribly sad as he watched her from beneath his eyelashes. Jake calmly ignored everybody’s clamouring long enough to speak clearly again in a slow, weary tone.

“The shower’s in the back if you want to use it, and I’ll try to pull together some clean clothes for you.” Jake gave her a smaller, pinched version of his usual gigantic, sunshine producing smile as he turned to leave. “I’ll always love you, no matter what. I hope that you know that.”

“I love you, too.” Nile dredged up a smile that felt pretty pathetic even to herself. “I don’t want any of your terrible t-shirts, though. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, after all.”

She heard his heavily sarcastic laughter even as he vanished out of sight with both Roque and Clay hounding him to start decrypting the stolen information that she had suffered through so much to get.

There had been so many dick photos, and not one of any of the three penises she would’ve actually been interested in seeing.

\--

Predictively, Jake had gone out of his way to pick out his most obnoxious shirt to go along with a spare pair of Cougar’s jeans, a unopened bag of men’s boxer briefs, and a pair of socks that Nile strongly suspected of previously belonging to Pooch.

The black shirt had an old timey design of three girls dancing around a hovering toaster oven, with ‘My Little Coven’ written below it in glittery gold writing. Jake was never getting the shirt back, even if it was four sizes too big for her. Nile basked in vindictive sentimentality for a few moments before her very unwanted shower chaperone spoke up in a lazy, nonchalant tone.

“Is Jensen really your brother?”

Aisha had turned out to be a long, lean whip of a woman of similar colouring and age to Joe with the cuddly personality of a stepped on rattlesnake. Nile was ninety eight percent sure she was also fucking Clay, since he had never had much of an inclination towards sleeping with people who weren’t likely to try and maim him during a one night stand.

Nile might’ve been intimidated by Aisha before she gained her immortality, but now she just wished that Aisha would stop avidly staring at her while Nile tried to clean herself up in a moldy shower stall that looked like somebody had died in it. Pink water sluiced off of her while she twisted to keep her hair from getting wet, and Nile dryly smiled to herself. She might’ve been murdered somewhere else, but her body was definitely getting cleaned up here.

“He’s one of them, yeah.” Nile turned away from Aisha’s staring eyes, and furiously scrubbed at a stubborn chunk of bloodied flesh that had gotten trapped in the crease under her breast before drying in place. “I’m not entirely sure where you think I’m going to go if you stop looking at me for three damn minutes.”

“Out the window. If I was ever going to bolt, it would be through there.” Aisha leaned forward on the rusted folding chair she was sprawled out on, and Nile could clearly see an unnerving hunger in her eyes. Thankfully, it wasn’t that hard to figure that she was ravenous for the information that Nile had, and not actually a physical desire for Nile. “What else do you know about Max?”

“Massive dickwad of the highest order. Probably kicks orphans for fun.” A muscle twitched under Aisha’s eye, and Nile frowned as she roughly dried herself off with the scratchy towel that Aisha had wordlessly tossed to her. “He did something to you, didn’t he?” 

“Yes.” Nile was pulling on her borrowed clothing as fast her slightly damp skin would let her, and was just putting on her last sock when Aisha made a thoughtful noise. “What bra size do you wear?”

“36 C.” The shirt smelled of sweat and Jake’s pilfered perfume as she pulled it over her head, and Nile huffed as she belatedly realized that he hadn’t even bothered to wash it first. Jackass. She flirtatiously winked at Aisha as her head popped free. “Why, are you offering to become my sugar mama? Planning to pamper me with lingerie and clothes that are my actual size?”

“Oh, absolutely. Just the finest items Walmart will sell for my baby girl.” Aisha’s comeback was delivered in the dryest deadpan that Nile had ever heard, but the corners of her mouth were twitching in a very small, easily missed smile as she relaxed. “I was going to loan you one of my bras if they would’ve fit, but your damned tits are too big for them.”

“Yeah, they’re wiley like that. Would’ve been tricky giving it back, anyway.” Aisha’s eyebrows arched in alarm as she started to stand up, but Nile was already close enough to sucker punch her windpipe before snapping her knee into Aisha’s crotch as she doubled over with a wheezing gasp. “Thanks for the offer, though.” 

Nile hastily secured and gagged Aisha with her old, filthy clothing before she could get her knees back under herself, and quickly liberated her of her two handguns and a few extra clips of ammo before she stood up with a sigh.

“For the record, I’m sneaking out the front door instead. You’re not gonna catch me squeezing my ass through that tiny window if I don’t have to.” Aisha was furiously spitting and hissing behind her gag, and Nile sympathetically patted her shoulder. “I wish we could’ve hung out more, but I’ve got to get going.” 

She didn’t bother blockading the bathroom door behind her, since she needed both speed and stealth on her side, and dragging over and toppling the nearest filing cabinet in front of the door wasn’t going to help on either account.

Finding both her shoes and still sheathed swords took a minute or two, but she was soon silently ghosting past where Clay, Roque and Pooch were clustered around Jake as he worked over the stolen hard drive. Thankfully, all four of them were making enough noise to wake the dead as she easily slipped by them.

Cougar wasn’t in the room. Nile frowned at the sudden realization that he hadn’t been by to check in with her, and glanced backwards when the hairs on the back of her neck rose in alarm.

“You should’ve stuck with the bathroom window.”

Aisha’s baseball bat collided with the side of her head a split second later, and her vision went totally black for the third time in as many hours. She knew that she should’ve moved that fucking filing cabinet.

\--

Honestly, Nile wasn’t even that mad at Aisha when she started coming back from her now familiar state of unconsciousness. If she had been suddenly sucker punched while having a relatively pleasant chat in a tense situation, she would’ve been pissed, too. 

Of course, an easy three quarters of her conversations with her team while they were on a mission could be easily described that way. If a person substituted the getting punched part with being shot at, the percentage crept up to eighty-five percent. 

Nile cringed at the realization, and wiggled her face into what felt like Roque’s hard shoulder. They might not yell at her so much for trying to bolt if she looked particularly adorable and harmless in her sleep.

“You’re not being very convincing right now, Freeman.” 

Roque sounded only marginally crankier than usual as he rumbled next to her, and Nile warily cracked her eyes open while he gustily sighed against the top of her head. The formal usage of her surname wasn’t a great sign, but the way she was protectively pulled in against his side was promising.

“I had to try and get back to my team, Roque.” Nile lightly batted at his massive paw of a hand to get him to let go of her, and finished straightening up as her neck loudly protested the sudden movement. “I would’ve left a note for you guys, but I was in a bit of a hurry.”

“Yeah, we kinda got that feeling when Aisha cold cocked you with her baseball bat.”

The sound of a grumpy huff came from her other side, and Nile looked over at where Clay was pissily glaring out at the scenery whipping past the van’s windows. There was a large gash still lazily oozing blood across his collarbone, and Nile quickly took stock of the van’s other passengers.

Pooch was driving, and he, Jake, and Aisha all shared the same aura of sulky defensiveness from where they were widely spaced out through the van. A very important member of Jake’s team was missing.

“Where’s Cougar?”

“We’re pretty sure that he’s with your team.” Jake’s voice was flat as he looked back at her from the front passenger seat. “It’ll probably turn out fine, since your team is apparently going after Max as well. Will they treat him alright?”

“Well, he might get flirted with, but that’s pretty much the worse that could happen to him.”

None of the guys would flirt with him, but Nile suspected that Andy might do it just for her own amusement. Nile would’ve been more concerned about the idea of it, if Cougar and Jake weren’t as deeply in love with each other in their own way as Nicky and Joe.

“Should I be worried about that?”

“Cougar only has eyes for you and you know it.”

That got her a tiny, pleased smile before he turned away to watch the road. Aisha was holding a melting ice pack to her throat, and Nile thoughtfully chewed on her lip. 

She was obviously going to be stuck with them for the time being, and she wanted to make it up to Aisha for hitting her. There weren't nearly enough women currently in her life, and Aisha’s company was nice in a semi-feral, marginally sweet kind of way.

“Aisha, I’m sorry about attacking you and stealing your guns.”

Aisha blinked in surprise before she gifted Nile with a small, dry smile.

“Apology accepted. Sorry about nailing you in the side of the head with a baseball bat.” Aisha mischievously smirked as she cocked her head at Nile. “I’ll buy you a nice bra to make up for it.” Nile chuckled despite herself, and felt Roque and Clay twitch almost in unison at their sudden turn of conversation. 

“I’ll find you one, too. It’ll be a mutual bra exchange.”

“The First Underwear Peace Treaty.” Aisha burst into raspy laughter at her own joke, and Nile joined in with a giggle despite the fact that every male passenger looking at the two of them in a mix of horror, amusement, and awe.

“Nile, how on God’s green earth do you already have an inside joke with Aisha? Seriously, you were only alone with her for maybe fifteen minutes, and you two are already giggling over some plot to take over the world, and I don’t even have one measly inside joke with her!”

“Oh, but I’ll always have our discussion of my severed human ear collection as a treasured memory, Jensen.” Aisha’s voice was as emotionless as humanly possible, but Nile could easily spot the devilish gleam in her eyes as she murmured to Jake.

“Is it a fake ear collection? How and why did that come up in the first place?”

“Jensen went against Cougar’s wise advice and supervision, and tried to flirt with Aisha.” Nile saw Pooch’s pearly white grin in the rearview mirror as he explained it to her with visible delight. “He got too much information that he didn’t want to know, and his flirting attempt crashed and burned very badly. I would’ve recorded it for posterity if his terrible flirting skills weren't common knowledge at this point.”

“Hey, hey, hey, my flirting isn’t that bad! I got Cougar eventually, didn’t I?”

“It took you four years of working with the man just to make a pass at him, Jay. Cougar was doing you a favour at that point.”

“He really, really was.” Clay suddenly spoke up, and he was actually smiling a little as he stopped glaring so seriously at perfectly innocent bushes and road signs. “You know who’s always been amazing at flirting, though?”

“Knack?” Roque answered Clay’s question, and he was grinning brightly as Clay nodded. “I’m pretty sure that half the Russian Embassy in London is still in love with her. I’m actually a little amazed that none of them wanted to kill her after the shit she pulled in that one poker game, but apparently she’s still getting a pretty steady stream of postcards from Sasha and Ivan twelve years after the fact.”

“I don’t think they wanted to run the risk of her going apex on their asses if they pushed it. Mind you, it probably helped that she gave their houses back to them after she won, without making them beg for them first.” Nile made a questioning noise in hopes of getting an explanation about who they were discussing, and Clay dryly smiled at her.

“Knack was an Infiltration and Extraction Specialist that rose through the ranks with Roque before she retired ten years ago. Very stealthy, very dangerous. Satan incarnate when it comes to any form of card or board games. She also flirts like she’s getting paid to do it.”

“Knack said that she was jealous of my freckles the first time I ever met her.” Nile glanced up at Jake, and was a little amazed to see a bashful blush rising over his cheeks as he looked downwards. “She also said I was the best she ever saw when it came to hacking.”

“Well, she definitely has a knack for making people feel good about themselves. Knack for everything, really, hence the nickname.” Nile could see Pooch’s wistful smirk in the mirror, and he shook his head a moment later. “Jolene kept threatening to ask for Knack’s hand in marriage if I didn’t get my ass in gear first.”

“Well, it’s too late for Jolene to make her move, seeing how Knack is getting married next summer.” Nile could feel Roque restlessly drumming his fingers across her bicep as he spoke.

“Good for her.” Clay’s reply to the news sounded considerably sadder than earlier, and Nile frowned at the group’s sudden turn of mood.

“What happened to Knack to make her retire?”

Roque glanced up to the front of the van before he answered her, and Nile saw Jake’s brief shake of his head before he ducked out of view.

“There’s a whole lot of classified information involved with that answer, Nile. Just be... extra cautious in the field if you can.”

Nile was pretty sure that her new definition of being cautious in the field was now vastly different from almost everybody else in the world.

“I’ll try my best.”

“Good. You feel like going home to Chicago, Nile?” Her stomach churned in fear at Jake’s sudden question, and she vigorously shook her head as an answer. Whatever happened in the next few days, she couldn’t take it home with her. Jake settled back down with a sigh. “Fine by me. Onwards to Los Angeles, Pooch!”

“Do I LOOK like I take commands from your gangly white ass, Jensen?”

The resulting fight being cheerfully spurred onwards by almost everybody in the van almost distracted Nile from the seething guilt and self loathing that had started eating her alive. She had to make another escape attempt the next time an opportunity presented itself, which would’ve been easier if she wasn’t packed in hip to hip with everybody.

Eventually, the odds were going to favour her.

\--

Nile hadn’t really expected anything to come to fruition from Aisha’s promise to take her shopping, but on their first stop through Texas had quickly resulted in Aisha less than gently bullying Pooch into letting Nile and herself tag along on his resupplying trip to Wal-Mart. Clay and Roque had allowed Nile to go with them, with the one firm stipulation that she had to leave both her swords and their sheath behind, since it was now clearly obvious that Nile couldn’t make herself escape without them.

Jake had been clearly stressed out enough at the idea that it looked like he could’ve easily bitten clean through a baseball bat without too much effort, and Nile had quickly made her retreat. True to her word, Aisha had sent Nile off with a shopping cart and a promise to pay for any clothing she wanted, and had idly trailed her as she picked out a few necessities.

Aisha had offered her opinion on Nile’s clothing choices when it was requested, and had also helpfully stalked off to get different sizes on the few items that Nile needed in a different fit. Nile eventually wrestled her way back into her original clothing, grabbed the armful that she actually wanted, and stepped out of the tiny changing room to find Aisha giving a plain black sweater a heartfelt stare.

Cheesy romance novel covers would’ve been the closest depiction to capture that look of tormented desire, and Aisha was gently rubbing the fabric of one sleeve between her fingers like it was going to dissolve if she touched the twenty dollar sweater too roughly. Which, fair enough, it might, but Nile was sure that Aisha could get a few weeks out of it at the very least.

“That’s a nice sweater.” Nile reached to curiously touch the fabric, and couldn’t help but grin at the texture. It was just as soft and fuzzy as kitten fur, and she could instantly tell why Aisha was drawn to it. “It’s very soft. What size do you wear?”

“I shouldn’t get it. It’d just be a frivolous waste of money.” Aisha’s determined tone was wavering as she stroked the sleeve over and over again. She clearly wanted to be baited into buying it.

“Woman, there are teeny tiny bats and black cats on the underwear you helped me find. I think we can throw a little money around on something that will make you happy.”

Aisha glanced over at Nile with a wry, hesitant smile.

“It’d be a real pity if you got this in a size small and didn’t notice before we bought it. In black, mind you. Some people can’t pull off wearing cotton candy pink like you can.”

Nile deftly plucked the correct sweater of the rack after double checking for the size, and stuffed it in with the rest of the clothing with a triumphant grin.

“Whoops. Is there anything else we should get in the wrong size?”

“No.” Aisha’s bonier hip affectionately bumped against her own before she started heading out of the woman’s clothing section with long, loping strides. “We should probably recover Pooch from the baby aisle before he loses his mind entirely in there.”

“Why would he be there?”

“His wife is due in a month.” Aisha airly shrugged as she led the way to where Pooch was. “I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be a boy.”

Sure enough, when they eventually tracked Pooch down, he was staring at baby boy onesies with huge, liquid brown eyes. A bright yellow one styled after Winnie the Pooh, complete with a complimentary honey jar shaped plushie seemed to be taking the brunt of his attention.

Nile carefully approached him so that he could clearly see her coming even with the distraction in front of him, and stood close enough that she could smell the ever present fumes of gasoline and engine oil that clung to him.

“Congratulations on the upcoming baby, Pooch.” Nile allowed herself to be reeled in so that Pooch could tuck one of her free arms into the crook of his own, and dropped her head against his shoulder when he made a small, thankful noise at her. “That fuzzy white hoody might be a better choice, if he’s going to be born in November. Plus, the ears on it might just scare off wild animals. Do you have any ideas for baby names?” 

“I do, I just don’t have a clue if any of them line up with what Jolene has in mind.” Pooch’s voice had turned coarse and gravelly, and Nile silently nodded as he wetly blinked at the fluffy hoody in question. “I haven’t seen her since she got pregnant, and I can’t even go home until we figure out how to clear our names.” Nile hugged his arm a little tighter as his breathing hitched. “Who knows, maybe I’ll never get to meet him. Or see Jolene again.”

Nile shoved her intrusive thoughts of Booker and Max out of her mind, and firmly patted him on his chest with her free hand. Aisha was doing a decent job at faking interest in the selection of baby wipes and diapers just inside her sightline, and Nile glanced away from her as she pulled herself together in the wake of Pooch’s grief.

“Don’t worry, you guys have this in the bag. Next thing you know, Jake’s going to be strutting around and trying to upsell you on naming the baby after him.” Pooch’s mouth twitched in what almost counted as a smile, and Nile ruthlessly upped the ante. “Jacob Jameson Linwood Porteous, and his Uncle Jake will probably have that name printed on every article of clothing your child will ever wear.” 

“I can definitely see that happening.” Pooch finally grinned as he glanced over at her. “Jenson’s biological parents had a real thing for alliteration in names, didn’t they? Besides, if all else fails, his Auntie Nile will bail him out.”

“Auntie Nile Naomi Freeman, if you want to get technical about it.”

Nile basked in the soft warmth of the moment as Pooch laughed at her, since it was starting to become increasingly obvious that Pooch’s son may never meet her, nevermind be bailed out by her.

\--

“Did you know that a small, yet significant part of the armadillo population spreads leprosy to humans every year?” 

Nile couldn’t certify that fact beyond what one short Youtube video had told her, but she was beginning to get a little desperate for something to break the awkward silence filling the hotel room. Yes, Nile, Jake, Pooch, and Roque were all grown ass adults with all the knowledge that entailed, but it didn’t mean any of them wanted to acknowledge or think about the fact that Aisha and Clay were definitely fucking and/or lightly maiming each other a few rooms away.

Hence, mentioning odd little facts out loud to take everybody’s mind off of it as Jake kept working his way deeper into his stolen hard drive while the rest of them sprawled across various pieces of furniture.

The steady rasping noise of Roque carefully sharpening his small mountain of knives paused, and Nile rolled her head over from where she had been staring at the pockmarked ceiling to make eye contact with him. 

“Well, that’s a nifty little fact. You got any more of them?” That finally got an outraged howl out of Jake, and Nile grinned at Pooch and Roque as her big brother started indignantly sputtering.

“Pooch, you little beyotch! I told you just the other day that dogs can only make ten noises, and that cats can make over a thousand different sounds, and you told me to shut up!”

“Why are you yelling at me, Jensen? Roque’s the one over there making all the encouraging noises at Nile, and I don’t hear you cussing at him.”

“Because he’d threaten to chop off my hand or something worse if I tried to directly insult him, and that’s why!” Jensen had a demonic light in his eyes as he tried to both scold and hammer away at his keyboard at the same time, and Nile endeavoured to look as innocent as possible. “Plus, I never want to hear you mention Roque making encouraging noises around my baby sister ever, ever again.”

“Well, she obviously needs to hear it, Jensen, if she puts up with your yammering all the time.” Roque dismissively sniffed at Jake’s complaint as he yearnfully stared at Nile’s sheathed swords. Not that he could’ve made them any sharper than they already were, since Andy had worked them over to the point that Nile could’ve easily shaved her legs with them if she wanted to.

“Hey Pooch?”

“Yeah?” Pooch was lovingly fussing over the teeny baby sweater that Nile had splurged on for him, which was currently being daintily folded for the tenth time in a row while he kept taking it in and out of his duffel bag.

“Did you know that dogs can make eleven noises, and that cats can make over five thousand different noises?”

“That’s the most fascinating and accurate thing I’ve ever heard, Nile. Tell us more, you glorious goddess among mere men.”

The first irritated syllable squeaked out of Jake before he abruptly froze in place over his quietly humming laptop. Nile quickly scrambled to her feet as Jake reared back from his computer with a panicked expression on his face.

“Max used us to kill al-Fadhil. That’s what the whole mission in Bolivia was about. A fucking cover up, and he’s got-” Jake yelped at whatever flashed across his screen next before he shoved his pistol into Nile’s hands. 

“Aisha is al-Fadhil’s daughter. We’ve got to go fucking save Clay.” Nile instinctively snatched the bundle of leather wrapped swords that Roque flung at her out of the air, and automatically fell into step with the rest of the team as she hastily strapped it on.

“Who’s al-Fadhil?”

“The drug lord in Bolivia running the child trafficking that we tried to put down.” Pooch shoved an extra clip of bullets into one of her jacket pockets while he jogged at a controlled run just behind where Roque was leading the charge to Clay and Aisha’s room. “Clay killed him, and I can’t imagine that Aisha is going to be thrilled about that information.”

“Well, fuck. Has anybody asked Aisha about that yet-”

Roque was already kicking the hotel room door down with an enraged bellow, and Nile swallowed a lump of frustration as Aisha promptly catapulted out of the bed she was sharing with Clay with little more than her new sweater, a pair of jeans and two obviously loaded guns. 

One of which was pointed at Clay, which was fair enough, because despite his occasional piss poor instincts around women, he was still a very dangerous man. The other gun was pointing at Jake’s pelvis, which was only really a danger to himself until it joined forces with the other parts of his body.

“Clay, she’s got a gun and it’s pointed at my dick.” Jake sounded more plantive than panicked as he stood to Nile’s left with his hands already in the air.

“I can see that. Where’s your gun, Jensen?”

“I gave it to Nile.” Nile could clearly hear him swallow as he finished speaking, and she didn’t dare glance away from Aisha’s impassive face. 

“Do you feel like that was a wise decision?”

“Smartest move I’ve made in ages, sir.” Nile heard Roque subtly start to sidle closer to her as he used Jake’s babbling for cover. “I know it makes no sense, but it would really make me feel better if you aimed at my head instead of my dick, Aisha.”

Nile bit her lip as Aisha obligingly swung her gun up to point directly at Jake’s forehead instead of his crotch. That was only going to make things trickier in the long run for her, and she decided to see if talking to Aisha would make a difference.

“Come on, Aisha, let’s talk this through. You lower your guns, and we’ll lower ours.”

“Nile, I don’t really think that plan is going to work out.” Aisha’s voice was silkily flat as she spoke, and Nile’s mouth twisted as she saw the resigned look in the other woman’s eyes.

“Well, you'll never know until you try.”

Aisha’s gun whipped over to point at Nile, and the hilt of one of Roque’s throwing knives thumped into her waiting palm just as Aisha sent a bullet through Nile’s opposite shoulder. It was a point of pride for Nile that she was better at throwing knives than the rest of her fellow immortals, and that all of them had asked her for tips the first time that they saw her work with them.

Roque and Cougar had both been training her with them since she was fourteen years old, and Nile could move as fast and accurately as a striking rattlesnake when she was using the right knife. Which meant her choice to graze the bicep of Aisha’s gun arm definitely took some deliberate and delicate adjustment.

Aisha dove into the bathroom as she kicked the door shut behind her, and everybody else opened fire on the wall separating them from the bathroom. It only took Nile a second or two to find and grab Aisha’s backpack before hurtling out of the room and down the hotel’s fire escape. 

After all, Aisha had already told Nile about her first choice in escape routes, and Nile’s shoulder hadn’t even got the chance to stop bleeding as she sprinted down the alley outside of Clay’s hotel room. Aisha was already staggering upright from her second story drop as Nile skittered to a stop fifteen feet away from her.

“You forgot your bag, Aisha.” Nile called out to her before she sent Aisha’s bag skidding down the filthy pavement towards her. Aisha’s brown eyes were wide in the dark alley, and Nile gave her a small smile as she lifted her gun in Nile’s direction for the second time in as many minutes. “Try to stay safe for me.”

Aisha hesitantly crouched down and pulled her bag closer to herself before she hoarsely answered her.

“I hope you do the same, Nile. Looks like I might have to get you another bra to make up for shooting you.”

“I doubt you’ll get the chance to.” Nile glanced up at the distant sound of the boys yelling at each other, and started slowly backing down the alleyway. “I’ve got to go. Try to take care of yourself, Aisha.”

Nile heard Aisha’s quiet farewell, but she had already turned her focus to jogging towards Clay’s room and the shitstorm of trouble that was probably brewing already.

\--

As expected, chaos was reigning in Clay’s hotel room, and Nile barely had the chance to breathlessly stroll back in before Jake’s head swiveled around to stare at her while his big blue eyes narrowed in thoughtful suspicion. Crap, that was his determined look, and her older brother was as relentless and ruthless as a rat terrier hunting a rodent when he set his mind to something.

Nile immediately started back peddling as he stood up, but she had already forgotten just how fast and light he was on his feet despite being built like a brick shithouse.

He athletically launched himself in her direction, and it took almost everything Nile had not to run as he nimbly landed in front of her. Her blood was partly sprayed across his shirt from where Aisha shot her, and she could only pleadingly shake her head as he gently shoved the sleeve of her t-shirt up over her recently injured shoulder.

His head cocked inquisitively as they both looked at her shoulder. There were still a few flakes of bone and flesh mixed in with her rapidly drying blood, but there was no denying that her shoulder itself was completely healed and intact.

“Huh.” Jake shook his head a little as he tugged her shirt sleeve back into place, and Nile couldn’t quite identify the expression on his face as he leaned away from her.

“Is Nile okay?”

Clay had his head down while he pulled the rest of his battered suit back on, and she twitched as Jake looked over his shoulder at the rest of his team. Being shot again hadn’t been something Nile could just play off anymore as something else, since all of them had been right next to her as the bullet passed through her shoulder. Whatever Jake told them next could irreparably change it all.

“She just got grazed by the bullet. Just gotta disinfect it, slap a bandaid on that sucker and call it a day.” Jake’s strained looking smile brightened by a couple of degrees, and Nile tried not to twitch too much as he gently steered her towards the doorway. “We’re just going to steal a couple beers and the last of the pizza before we head up to the roof, though. Keep an eye out for Aisha and what not.”

All three men waved them off with little more than a glance in their direction, since they were obviously still working through the sudden Aisha problem and impeding eviction from the hotel.

Nile joined Jake in his unenthusiastic trudge back to their shared room, and quietly decided not to try and talk him out of his plan even as they fetched the aforementioned pizza and beer along with the big, fluffy comforter from Jake’s bed before they headed to the hotel rooftop.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

It was just a few balmy days off from November in Dallas, but the knife-like wind this high up made Nile grateful for the blanket that Jake slung around their shoulders as they sat down on the edge of the roof.

“Gimme a minute first. Pizza?” 

Nile shook her head before tapping her finger on one of the beers wedged between them. Jake snapped the cap off the one she had picked with a silver ring that she faintly recognized as being one of Cougar’s before mutely handing her bottle over.

“You know, I was thinking of something else entirely when I wished I could spend more time with you.” Jake tipped his head back, and half of his own beer vanished in two long swallows before he spoke again. “You know, maybe taking some pottery classes together, or a trip to Disney World, that sort of thing.”

“Are you still pecking away at making a working Iron-Man suit?”

“Yeah, much to Clay’s horror and dismay.” Nile followed his stare up to where the stars were putting up a decent show, despite all the city lights that they were competing against. “Really, I’d settle for a life size, non-functional helmet at this point. If Cougar asks for Christmas present tips, you could always tell him about that instead.”

“What about a wedding ring instead?”

“You’re looking at the engagement ring, cricket.” Nile peeked sideways to see Jake’s goofy, joyous grin as he waggled the finger that had their beer opener on it. “He asked me in New York just before we shipped out for the last time. It was a very romantic and sweet proposal.”

“Aww, congratulations, Jake!” Nile instantly twisted to hug him while she traded her mostly full beer to her other hand so that she wouldn’t accidentally spill it. Jake made a pleased noise as he hugged her back, and his stubble scratched against her cheek as he affectionately kissed her temple.

“Thanks, it means a lot to hear that from you.” Nile felt Jake drop a second, firmer kiss in the same spot before he pulled away from her with a quickly sobering look on his face. “I hate to do this, but now we’ve got to talk about the serious stuff. I just want you to know that whatever you tell me, it’s staying between the two of us, and nobody else will find out about it.”

Nile numbly nodded as she squeezed his hand in the growing darkness.

“I need you to be completely honest with me about this.” 

Jake was convulsively squeezing her hand back in a jittery, nervous rhythm, and Nile wished she could say something to set everything back to how it was a year ago.

There was a sharp pang in her chest at the thought of never getting the chance to meet her new family if everything could’ve magically been reset. 

“I will.”

“Okay.” Nile stared blankly ahead as Jake carefully exhaled next to her. “I think it’s down to two plausible options. I’ve either gone completely insane and hallucinated the way you died in my arms, or you can’t actually die.”

Nile clenched down on his hand before she bravely croaked out her answer.

“You’re not insane or hallucinating things, Jake. I can die, but I keep coming back to life. I can’t control it.”

“Oh. Oh, oh.” Jake was gasping as he crumpled forward like he had been shot in the stomach, and Nile felt her eyes burn as she watched him shakily fall apart next to her. “F-Fuck. Nile. Did you really-” Nile pulled him closer even as he yanked her into a tight hug that was just shy of painful. “You got shot twice, Nile, a-and I didn’t do anything to s-stop it. Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry. I fucked up so badly.”

“That wasn’t your fault, Jake.” Nile buried her face in the warm skin of his neck, and finally allowed herself to grieve as her tears rolled freely onto Jake’s shirt. She really hoped that everybody wouldn’t hate her too much for her next confession. “I’m not alone in this.”

“Thank f-fuck for that.” Jake’s back was violently quaking under her grasp as she gratefully wiggled further into his embrace. “Are they taking care of you?”

“Yeah, they’ll always love me. It’s all gonna be okay, Jake.”

The two little white lies in a row didn’t hurt nearly as badly as she thought they would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cougar's proposal to Jake heavily involved trashy pizza, a long day at most of the arcades that New York has to offer, and riding the roller coasters at Coney Island until he almost barfed in his Hat. Totally worth it.
> 
> It'll be Joe's POV next chapter, and thank you all for your lovely encouraging comments! Comment below if you're into this.


	7. People Will Surprise You That Way.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max really is the fucking worst, Booker sexually recovers a little more with Nicky and Joe, and the hospital's morgue is way colder than any of them remember it being. At least none of them are dead this time.

Joe found himself missing the days when the most innovative way humanity had of waging war against each other consisted solely of throwing large rocks around until something connected.

It wasn’t like he, or even Andy with her mind boggling age was old enough to be around in those days, but he could still easily imagine it as he waited in stunned silence for things to start making sense again.

Andy and Cougar’s glum faces grimly looked back at him from over the top of Booker’s laptop and the scattered remains of their supper. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Warheads just don’t do that sort of thing.” Andy’s sneaker clad foot clumsily swung up to rest on the top of his knee, and he absentmindedly patted it as he tried to wrap his mind around the footage of what Max’s newfangled weapons could do. 

“Si. But apparently-” Cougar paused as he tipped his hat up so that he could re-read the warhead’s official name. “A sonic dematerialiser, otherwise known as a SNUKE, can and will dematerialise entire islands.”

Cougar’s face looked almost as exhausted as Joe felt as he expanded further on his thoughts. 

“That wasn’t a particularly small island either, and Max will apparently have four of these weapons in the very near future.”

“At least there won’t be any nuclear fallout if they do go off.” Andy shrugged under the weight of the incredulous stares being leveled in her direction. “There might be a large chunk missing out of the landscape if we don’t stop him first, but there also won’t be any three headed rats running around at the same time.”

“I’m not sure if we’re going to survive your particular brand of optimism, Andy.”

“I’m sure that you’ll live, Joe.” He firmly ignored the extremely unhelpful statement that was delivered through a lengthy yawn.

“We’ve made a decent start on the plan to take down Max, and I don’t think we’ll get much more work done on it tonight.” Her foot suddenly jerked in his hand, and he glanced up to find that she was gently smiling at him. “You should go check in with Nicky and Booker, Joe.”

He honestly would’ve loved to join them in the roomy back bedroom where they had sequestered themselves a few hours ago with only the slim book that Cougar had loaned to Booker, and the idle plan to undergo a potential nap on Nicky’s part.

Unfortunately, Joe just couldn’t shake the anxious feeling in his chest that was telling him that he wasn’t doing enough to help with conceiving a plan to finally eliminate Max. 

It all added up with the pinched feeling in his back and neck and the restless uneasiness that he had been feeling since they drove into Los Angeles. The general sense of jitteriness mixed in with all of it didn’t make him feel like he could be decent company for Nicky and Booker right now.

“I wouldn’t want to disturb them right now.” Joe recognized that it was a feeble excuse even while he said it. Andy arched her eyebrow as she very gingerly bumped one of his chair legs with her foot.

“Nicky is probably sleeping, and Booker is likely tearing through The-” Andy turned to quizzically tap at Cougar’s elbow until he tilted his head in her direction. “-Starving Games?”

“The Hunger Games. It’s a very good book series.” Cougar roguishly grinned at him from underneath his hat brim, and Joe couldn’t help but smile back at him. “Make sure that you tell Booker that I’ve got the other two books in my gun case so that he doesn’t feel like he has to pace himself while he’s reading it.”

“Booker’s going to be so happy when you tell him about that, Joe.” Andy pushed herself up out of her kitchen chair with only a quietly hissed swear word and a slight wobble on her injured knee. “Cougar and I are probably just going to curl up in front of the tv and talk about wedding plans anyway. You’re not exactly going to miss much if you stay out here with us.”

“You’re going to scare Cougar off if you keep moving that fast, Andy.”

“Smart ass.” Joe wryly smirked as she lightly flicked a lock of his hair in passing. “You know perfectly well that I meant Cougar’s wedding plans with Nile’s brother, you little brat.”

“What, like an open bar or a cash bar? Spring wedding versus summer, that sort of thing?”

“Jake and I decided on an open bar for the first three drinks per guest, and a cash bar after that.” Joe reached up to pat Cougar’s hand as it lightly brushed against his shoulder while its owner slipped past him. “We were also thinking about the idea of a fall wedding instead of a summer one. Have a good night, Joe.”

“I hope you have a good one as well.” Joe stared up at the ceiling in thought for a moment before he spoke quietly enough to pass under Nicky’s bat-like hearing. “Don’t let Andy give you any tips on wedding favours for your guests, because all of her ideas on that front are just terrible.”

He could hear Andy sourly snarling at him from where she had already reached the living room, but Joe felt perfectly justified in giving Cougar that advice after hearing dozens of tales about Andy’s various weddings over her long life.

Joe admittedly hadn’t attended many weddings recently, but he was pretty sure that almost nobody needed sacrificial white oxen or celebratory snuff boxes at their special celebration. The barrels of honeyed mead probably wouldn’t be turned down in a hurry, though.

He peeled himself out of his seat with a heavy sigh. Joe already knew that he wouldn’t sleep well tonight but he owed to himself and his lovers to try not to sink into another one of his cleaning fits that was usually his first resort when his inflamed mind refused to let him rest. 

The dingy gray grouting between the bathroom tiles caught his eye as he finished his nightly grooming rituals, and he gritted his teeth as he felt a stabbing pain envelop his skull while he restrained himself from giving into the cleaning temptation that it presented. No, the best he could do was curl up in bed and try not to be too disruptive as he tried to fall asleep. It was not a very happy thought.

He made sure that he walked just heavily enough that Booker could hear him coming before he slipped in past their shared bedroom’s ajar door. Joe didn’t take any particular care in closing the door quietly, since he knew quite intimately that anybody trying to silently work a door knob was equally likely to wake Nicky up than if intruders tried to kick the same door down.

Booker mumbled a greeting that Joe didn’t catch in its entirety, and he didn’t have to force a smile to his face as he turned to catch sight of where Booker was curled up in bed with Nicky.

Nicky’s face was pressed against the vulnerable bare skin of Booker’s stomach, and the rest of his body was involved in a complicated embrace of Booker’s lower half that only made Joe’s head hurt more as he tried to mentally unravel how they had gotten in that position to start with. 

Booker was idly petting the back of Nicky’s head while his other hand awkwardly contorted so that he could flip through the pages one handed without disturbing Nicky from his rest.

The book must have had him thoroughly enthralled, because Booker’s feet had always been a dead give away to his state of mind while he was reading. They arched, flexed, and waggled when a book had him firmly in its grasp, and his toes were currently curling madly even as his feet feverishly jiggled in place just below Nicky’s knees.

Joe took the time to bask in the peacefully domestic moment while he stripped down to his underwear before he crawled onto the bed behind Nicky with a quiet grunt.

“How’s your book?”

“It reminds me a lot of when I was growing up, actually. Different settings of course, but it still has a lot of similarities to it.” Joe tucked a smile against his own arm as Booker’s hand melandered from Nicky’s head to the back of Joe’s neck without Booker looking up from his reading material. “It’s not bad as a distraction after that video, but-” Joe blearily looked up as Booker’s hand jerked away after the first soothing stroke down Joe’s neck. “Are you feeling okay, Joe?”

“Not really, no.” Joe drooped with the unhappy admission, and longingly wished for the return of Booker’s warm hand as he tried to ineffectively squirm around in a hunt for a position that didn’t hurt. “I think it’s a tension headache. How did you know?”

“Your neck feels like it’s made out of braided steel cables. Kind of a dead giveaway. How does the rest of you feel?”

Joe let out a piteous whine as he gingerly nudged his head into Booker’s hand.

“You poor thing.” Joe tilted his head into Booker’s immediately affectionate touch, and hummed in agreement with Booker’s sympathetic murmur. “Would a back rub make you feel better?”

“Have you actually given many of those?”

Booker huffed in amusement at Joe’s curious question, and Joe peeked upwards to see his languid smirk as he answered him.

“Well, I did give Simone a back rub for every night of our twenty five years of marriage, if you want to count that as any measure of practice. You’ll probably even get through it without getting impregnated if we’re really careful about it.”

“Don’t make promises that you can’t keep, Booker.”

Booker’s smirk turned into a much darker, filthier thing, and Joe’s cheeks burned at his own boldness and the mental image that it summoned up.

“I think you’d have to be pretty filled up with semen for it to be a legitimate breeding attempt, Joe. Practically overflowing, really.” Joe’s heart hammered against his ribs as Booker lazily coaxed his chin up with one hand so that Joe was forced to meet his darkening stare. “Would you like that? Being filled with us over and over again as we tried to put a child in you?”

The fantasy provoked by Booker’s words was depraved and perverted for all of the impracticality of it, and Joe’s heart rose up into his throat as he managed to force out the words despite the pleasurable humiliation of having to say it out loud.

“Yes. I would.”

“Good. You’d make beautiful children.” Joe quietly keened at the praise as Booker lovingly kissed him before pulling away with an affectionate nip to Joe’s earlobe. “Sadly, I can’t do it right now, so you’re just going to have to sit on that thought while I give you a backrub.”

“What?” Joe hastily blinked as he struggled to make sense of what Booker had just said with his lust fogged brain, but Booker was already sliding out of bed with a wide smirk before Joe could try to grab him. “No, come back here and tell me more about that.”

“Oh no, I can’t possibly do that and rub your shoulders at the same time.” Joe growled at Booker’s demonically smug expression, and would’ve complained a lot more if Booker wasn’t already coming back around to Joe’s side of the bed with a jar of coconut oil. “You know, due to my general lack of practice with handing out massages. Wouldn’t want to risk dividing my attention at a critical moment.”

“Brat cat.” Joe shoved his face into his pillow for a lack of better options, and grumpily wriggled as Booker gracefully straddled Joe’s hips. It was probably just as well that Joe was facedown on the bed, since Booker didn’t need the added satisfaction of seeing a very disappointed part of Joe’s anatomy. “I bet that you never put Nile through this sort of torment in bed.”

“She got it much worse than you did.” Joe softly sighed at Booker’s first dragging touch over the sides of his neck before settling down with a relieved groan as Booker kept talking. “I dragged it out for quite a while, but she eventually got the best of me in the end. She’s almost as prone to biting as you and Nicky, though.”

“Well, Nicky does like doing that, but I think that it goes hand in hand with his little sadistic streak.” Booker paused mid-stroke, and Joe twisted around enough to clumsily pat at Booker’s knee in an attempt to reassure him. “He’s only like that when everybody’s into it, though. He says that it’s more fun that way.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” Booker’s legs relaxed on either side of his hips, and Joe craned his neck enough to see the small smile gracing the other man’s face. “Is there anywhere you want me to be gentler on?”

Joe shook his head against his folded arms, and tried to ready himself for whatever Booker had up his sleeve. His nimble fingers went to work moments later, and Joe quickly found himself going totally limp under Booker’s skillful ministrations.

It was true that Booker’s first exploratory touches were a little hesitant and out of sync, but he quickly moved past it and started kneading the tension and small aches out of Joe’s body. 

He lost how much time was passing as Booker’s hands moved over his body, but he was pretty sure that Booker had just moved on to Joe’s scalp when Joe finally noticed that Nicky was peacefully watching them with a blissful smile. 

“Have you been awake for very long, Habibi?” Joe nuzzled into Nicky’s outreached hand as he softly sighed his question, and found himself purring despite his best efforts not to while Booker’s clever fingers roved in delightful circles across Joe’s head.

“I woke up when you got into bed, Hayati.” Joe dreamily watched as Nicky pushed himself upright enough to kiss the side of Booker’s shoulder, and he could pinpoint the moment when the serene light in Nicky’s bright green eyes started sliding in a more sinful direction. “I also heard what you wanted us to do to you. Do you still want that to happen, my love?”

Booker made a heated noise that was filled with desire from where he was still sitting astride Joe’s back, and he felt his eyelids flutter in the wake of the flood of arousal that washed over him again at the reminder of the filthy things that he and Booker had spoken about. 

Nicky sounded whole heartedly interested in following through on it, and Joe and his rapidly stirring body was undoubtedly in the mood for it.

They still had to consult with the youngest member of their group about whether he wanted to participate in it, though.

“Sebastian?” Joe’s toes curled against his will as Booker lightly rubbed along the length of his jaw, and he had to take a moment or two just to remember the exact phrasing of the question that he wanted to ask.

“Mmhm?” Booker’s hum was already lower and deeper than usual, and Joe found himself struggling to keep on track when he finally noticed the hot, heavy weight of Booker’s erection pressed flush to his back.

“Would you like to have sex with us?”

“I’d love to.” He felt Booker shift against him moments before he forced a pleading mew out of Joe by the ruthlessly cruel tactic of sucking on Joe’s earlobe when he wasn’t expecting it. “Both of you can feel free to touch me wherever you want to.”

Nicky’s eyes flared wide with joyous surprise, and Joe chose to take prompt advantage of Booker’s newly extended offer by greedily sucking two of Booker’s long fingers into his mouth with a moan.

Joe thought that he could feel Booker’s cock twitch against his skin even as Booker growled some amazingly dirty French curses at him for the unexpected move. Joe flirtatiously winked at Nicky as Booker’s palm spasmed against his cheek, and he carefully watched his husband’s responding grin as Joe needily pulled Booker’s fingers in deeper with a greedy bob of his head.

Booker gratifyingly choked on nothing but air, and Joe promptly made the filthiest noise that he could come up with as he swirled his tongue around and sucked on Booker’s pleasantly calloused fingers with a quiet whimper. 

“As you can see, Nile and I aren’t the only people with an oral fixation around here, Booker.” Joe cheekily nipped at the webbing between Booker’s fingers as Nicky talked to him with a wide smirk on his face, and was quickly rewarded with Booker bluntly pushing another one of his fingers into Joe’s mouth.

“I can definitely see that, now.” Booker was sounding decidedly strained as Joe gleefully fellated his mouthful of Booker’s fingers, and Joe started lazily rutting against the bed just for the sheer joy of it as Booker and Nicky watched him with darkening eyes. “How do you want to do this, Nicky?” Booker’s question almost came out in a squeak, and Joe redoubled his efforts to make Booker come in his pants from this alone.

“I was thinking it would be fun if I showed you how Joe likes to be opened up.” Joe sharply keened into Booker’s muffling hand while Nicky delivered a swift, stinging smack to Joe’s ass before soothingly petting where the sudden strike had landed on him. “After all, I’m sure that Joe wouldn’t mind holding himself open so that you can get a decent view of him in action.”

Joe’s face burned at the thought of displaying his most intimate areas to Booker as Nicky worked him over, and he had to shakily let go of Booker’s fingers just so he could pleadingly look over his shoulder at his lovers as his trapped erection twitched in the confines of his underwear.

Booker dismounted from his back with far less grace than when he had first straddled Joe’s back, which probably wasn’t helped by how Nicky had immediately dragged him into a passionate kiss the second that Booker had stopped moving.

Joe shuddered heavily while Nicky affectionately kneaded at Joe’s calf with his free hand, and belatedly realized that Nicky was still waiting for Joe’s permission for his plan to work Joe open as Booker watched them both.

“Nicky’s never suggested letting anybody watch me like that before, Booker.” Nicky’s eyebrow questioningly arched even as he roughly plundered Booker’s mouth, and Joe’s knees felt distinctively wobbly as he rose up onto them and did his best to present himself with an arch of his back.

“Please don’t make me wait too long to do that.” Nicky went slit-eyed with pleasure at Joe’s explicit permission, and he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying muffling Booker’s broken little gasps before breaking away from him with one last sucking kiss.

“Well, now I get to show you off properly, Joe. Have you ever prepared anybody with your fingers, Booker?”

Joe ducked his head with a shiver when they both started to slowly pull off his underwear with long, lingering touches after briskly removing their own clothing.

“I haven’t done that to anybody else in a very long time, but I did finger myself recently.” Joe beamed as he felt his heart warm at Booker’s shyly pleased smile as he idly ran his warm hands over Joe’s bare thighs. “I couldn’t do that to myself before I started this with Nile and you two. It feels really nice to be able to do that again.”

Joe demonstrated his joyful pride in how much Booker was healing and recovering by reeling the Frenchman in for some affectionate kissing as Nicky draped himself over Booker’s back while he murmured husky praises and compliments directly into his ear.

He had almost forgotten about Nicky’s promise to make Joe display himself for Booker by the time they spent a few blissful minutes tangled up with each other, but Nicky boldly guiding Booker’s broad hands into cupping Joe’s ass pitched him right back into where they had left off.

Joe buried his face in Booker’s neck with a heavy shudder as two of Booker’s long fingers curiously swept down the crack of Joe’s ass with a soft questioning noise. 

He was perfectly aware that Nicky was practically chomping at the bit to use Joe and himself as a training ground for Booker to see what a healthy sexual encounter with men could look like, but it was a whole new experience for Joe to be right in the middle of it.

“Have you tried tasting him right-” Joe quietly whined as Nicky gently tipped Joe’s head backwards so that he could tap his finger against the soft pocket of skin under Joe’s jaw that reliably sent him around the bend whenever Nicky decided to exploit it. “-Here?”

Joe hazily watched as Booker shook his head before he dipped down to where Nicky’s fingers were still lightly resting on Joe’s throat, and he tried to compose himself a little before Booker touched him anymore than he already had. He shivered as he felt Booker’s tongue slide over Nicky’s knuckles before hungrily latching onto Joe’s sensitive neck before he coaxed a sharp whimper out of Joe from the unexpected graze of his teeth. 

Nicky had a particularly ruthless gleam in his eyes as Booker sucked and bit rapidly healing bruises into the terribly delicate area that he was fixated on, and Joe could only helplessly scrabble at Nicky’s forearm as his hand steadily tugged Joe’s neck into a more extreme backwards arch. 

Joe knew that Nicky would instantly release him the moment that he actually wanted loose, so he felt perfectly safe and content playing along with Nicky’s mock act of cruelty while Booker’s busy mouth migrated downwards. 

“You’re so beautiful like this, my heart.” Tears sprang to Joe’s eyes in the wake of Nicky reaching around to tenderly cup Joe’s throbbing erection even while twisting his handful of curls at the crown of Joe’s head. “The two of you are just perfect like this.” Joe shakily inhaled with a harsh gasp as Nicky’s grip lightened to a barely there hold while Booker curiously nibbled at one of Joe’s hipbones with a happy hum.

“My darlings, my little rock doves, I-” Joe squinted one eye at Nicky as all the bossy, happy-go-lucky tormenting glee abruptly started leaking out of his husband like a deflating balloon. 

He had been thoroughly looking forward to when Nicky usually lost his sense of patience and started on the viciously pinching and biting of nipples part of the evening, and now Nicky just looked like he was returning home after forgetting half of an important grocery list.

Nicky’s apologetic kiss to Joe’s cheek felt decidedly sheepish, and even Booker was starting to look suspiciously upwards while the head of Joe’s leaking erection bounced off of his ear.

“Did you just call us pigeons?” Joe could see Booker’s eyes flicking over to Joe’s bobbing cock every few seconds even in the heat of his undignified concern, and Joe lazily reached down to thumb at Booker’s reddened mouth while he kept talking. “What’s wrong?”

Nicky bashfully looked down before mumbling something that even Joe couldn’t make out.

“What was that?” 

Nicky’s face flushed a bright red as he repeated himself a bit more clearly.

“I don’t think we have any lubrication.”

“Is that all you were worried about?” 

Nicky nodded at Booker’s breezy question with a bewildered frown, and Joe couldn’t resist giving the mole on Nicky’s cheek a friendly little kiss as Booker stayed where he was.

“The coconut oil works perfectly fine as anal lube. It’ll break down a condom if you try to use one with it, though.” 

Joe lowly hissed through his teeth as Booker abruptly turned his attention away from their important conversation to lightly pet the length of Joe’s cock with one of his fingers.

Nicky mercifully picked up the conversational slack as Joe tried not to lose his mind at Booker’s teasing, and asked the question that was on both of their minds.

“How do you know that, Sebastian?”

“I fingered myself open with it while you two were still in the kitchen with everybody else. I needed a little distraction from all the mission planning.” Booker’s petting became more deliberate as he tilted his head with an intrigued grin.

“You know, I’ve forgotten if other people’s precome tastes different from my own. I’m actually a little curious to see if yours will taste differently than Nicky’s when I finally get to try it.”

His cock promptly bounced at Booker’s less than subtle hint to get things back on the road, and Joe asked the most urgent question on his mind.

“Do you want me on my hands and knees or my back?” 

“On your back for the prepping, and we can switch around to having Booker underneath you when you’re on all fours.”

“Sounds like a plan.” 

Joe gave Nicky a swift kiss before allowing himself to be toppled backwards from Booker’s light shove to his chest, and was only mildly surprised to find that almost all of the bed’s pillows had been arranged to lay directly underneath his back and hips.

He knew perfectly well that it forced both him and his pelvis into Nicky’s prefered angle for fingering Joe open when he was laying on his back, so Joe felt free to stretch out on top of his cushioned den of impeding fornication with a happy sigh. 

“When did you two even find the time to arrange the pillows, anyway?”

“We did it in shifts. Are you sure that you’re comfortable enough like that?” Booker’s eyes were filled with concerned worry as he sprawled out next to Joe, and Joe stretched over enough to plant a reassuring kiss on Booker’s tensely pursed mouth.

“It’s perfect, Booker.” Joe smiled while his softly placed kiss leeched most of the visible tension out of Booker, and gently took to kneading at the back of Booker’s neck while Nicky sorted himself out at the foot of the bed. “Besides, Nicky will probably be putting my ankles behind my head before you know it.”

“There’s no way that you’re flexible enough to pull that off, Joe.” Booker’s eyes glittered with mirth as he dropped a scratchy kiss on the tender skin of Joe’s inner arm, and Joe lost his breath for a moment at the warmth in the other man’s eyes. 

“I just can’t believe that I finally put myself out there sexually for the first time in decades, and all I get is terrible lies and people exploiting the sensitivity of my nipples. It’s not too late to go back to celibacy, is it?”

“Well, it’s not our fault that we’re still young and limber compared to you, Booker.” Nicky mischievously grinned as he crawled closer to them, and Joe honked with laughter as Nicky’s groping fingers rudely connected with Booker’s ass before he spoke over Booker’s startled yelp. “Or would calling you Old Man be more accurate in this case?”

“Lies, nipple torturing, AND slander!” Booker howled as he promptly tackled Nicky in scolding retaliation, and Joe found himself shaking with laughter as they playfully wrestled with each other in the fork of Joe’s outstretched legs. 

Joe was definitely glad to see that they were carefully avoiding bumping into anything more sensitive than Joe’s ankles as they fought, and their small fight finally came to a standstill when Nicky pinched one of Booker’s stiff nipples between his teeth.

Despite all of his previous protests about that particular move, Booker’s instantaneous moan still sounded pretty pleased as Nicky’s mouth slickly worked over Booker’s chest with the light of victory in his eyes. 

Joe had barely started pumping his fist up and down his erection in an attention seeking move at the sight of them together before they turned to crawl closer towards him with matching grins.

Joe quietly hissed as he spread his legs far enough apart to accommodate the not inconsiderable width of Nicky and Booker’s shoulders, and writhed with a low whine as Nicky sucked a kiss onto the same spot on Joe’s hip that Booker had been nibbling on earlier.

Nicky’s next kiss landed on the crease separating the top of Joe’s leg from his ass cheek while Booker soothingly rubbed the outside of Joe’s thigh as he watched the two of them moving together with wide eyes. 

Joe couldn’t stop his hips from bucking upwards as Nicky purposefully nibbled, licked and kissed his way across Joe’s ass cheek with a clear final destination in mind, and Joe abruptly knew that he wouldn’t be able to take it when Nicky was still four inches away from making oral contact with his entrance. 

He usually enjoyed having Nicky’s mouth on him whenever they had the chance to indulge in some rimming, but Joe was already too keyed up and too sensitive to really enjoy it now if he let Nicky follow through with it.

Joe lightly pushed him away by bracing his foot on Nicky’s shoulder, and firmly shook his head when both of them looked up at the sudden motion.

“No, Nicolo, I don’t want to do that right now. Please stop.” 

“Of course, Yusuf.”

Nicky gracefully pulled away from him with only a small comforting pat to Joe’s hip, and Joe quickly winked at Booker’s slowly dawning look of amazement and relief. 

It wasn’t hard to figure out that both of those emotions were caused by Booker's sudden realisation that if anybody wanted to withdraw their consent about something, it was going to be instantly respected and obeyed by everybody else. Joe didn’t say no to Nicky for that particular reason, but it was undoubtedly good for Booker to witness that in action.

“Do you still want me to finger you open, Joe?”

“Yes, please.” Joe stretched prettily for their watching eyes while he aimed his best seductive look at the two of them with a wide grin. “I need to feel you inside me.”

“Is it alright with you if I finger you open as well?” Booker’s blue eyes were filled with determined hope as he quietly requested Joe’s permission, and Joe blew him a quick kiss instead of trying to contort himself enough to actually press his lips to Booker’s.

“I’d love that, Booker.” Joe wickedly grinned at the ecstatic look that suddenly popped up on the younger man’s face. “After all, your calluses will do an excellent job at scratching more than one kind of itch.”

If Booker wanted to be teased and flustered less in this relationship, he should’ve practiced looking less cute when he was blushing and sputtering. Nicky’s scolding nip to the inside of Joe’s inner thigh moments later forced a vaguely apologetic sounding gasp out of him as he arched away from the faint sting of Nicky’s teeth.

“Who’s being a torment now, my love?” Joe unrepentantly grinned back at Nicky’s mockingly stern look as he glanced up from massaging Booker’s dominant hand and fingers while under the guise of lubing him up with coconut oil while he nipped at Booker’s neck.

“Did somebody usurp your perpetual championship of it when I wasn’t looking?”

He cackled at the long suffering sigh that Nicky heaved as he slicked up his own fingers, and obligingly slung his left leg over Nicky’s shoulder when his husband lightly tapped at his calf.

Booker’s accompanying shoulder was just out of the comfortable reach of Joe’s leg, and it took getting a nudge of his own from Nicky to break Booker out of the way he was hungrily staring at Joe.

“Sorry, Joe.” Booker quickly ducked within reach, and easily took the weight of Joe’s other leg without blinking. “It’s just that…” Joe shakily turned his head away with a soft sigh as Booker trailed his slippery fingers down from Joe’s groin to his entrance in an agonizingly gentle petting motion. “-It’s just that you’re just so small right there. How can anything possibly fit in there?”

“Patience and practice helps. Foreplay.” Joe could hear himself helplessly falling into shorter and shorter sentences as the very tip of Booker’s index finger pressed at the centre of himself without breaching the tight ring of muscle. 

Sure, his hard on had flagged slightly at certain moments, but Joe had been aching for this for a very long time in more than one way, and he wasn’t entirely sure how much patience he had left in him. “Please, please, please-”

Nicky’s finger pushed into him in one deliciously rough movement, and Joe hoarsely sobbed in relief even as he scrambled for a grip on the sturdy headboard instead of Booker or Nicky.

He didn’t trust himself to be as gentle as he could be if he got his hands on either of them, and he restlessly twisted with a sharp whine as Nicky quickly set to opening him up enough for Booker’s thicker finger to sink in alongside of his own.

“Where is his-” Joe twitched and dug his heel into Booker’s shoulder blade while he clicked his tongue in obvious irritation at forgetting the English term for what he was looking for in the heat of the moment, and Joe was forced to bite his own bicep as Booker quickly asked Nicky something in a blur of annoyed French. 

“I know what you mean, Booker, but I can’t remember it right now for the life of me.”

The skin by the corners of Nicky’s eyes were crinkling in adorable amusement, and Joe was so frustrated that he was more than a little tempted to either pin him down and take what he needed, or storm off to the nearest sex toy store for some emergency shopping.

Or, and this was a big maybe, Nicky could hurry the fuck up and get a move on before Joe lost his patience and his mind.

“Here, let me show you where it is.”

Nicky’s second finger buried itself into Joe moments later, and he did his best to smother a howl as he finally realized what the odd motion that he could feel against his inner walls was.

Nicky had caught Booker’s finger with his own, and was guiding Booker’s calloused finger tip directly to Joe’s prostate. He could have blessed Booker’s soul as he broke Joe in gently with a fluttering massage that almost made him see stars, and he didn’t even flinch as Joe’s leg involuntarily spasmed against his neck.

Joe barely managed to hold eye contact with him for a few moments before the fiery possessiveness and adoration in the other man’s eyes made him look away, and he arched his back upwards when another one of Booker’s fingers easily slipped into him. Yes, Nicky was plenty girthy, but having four fingers inside him pretty much ensured a smooth entry of Nicky’s cock with minimal stretch or twinging.

“I’m ready, come on, I need it-” Joe tried to pull himself off of their joined fingers, and glared at the two of them when Nicky abruptly pinned his hips back down to the bed before tightly encircling the base of Joe’s cock with his hand. “Nicky, Booker, please, I don’t need anymore stretching.”

“Booker wants to taste your precome, Habibi. Would you really deny him that?” Nicky’s half lidded eyes were blazing with heat, and Joe’s hips ineffectively jerked as he glanced over at Booker, who was still steadily working over his prostate with an unflinching rhythm. 

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Booker. I know you said that you didn’t want to be penetrated until you’re comfortable with it.”

“It’s alright, Joe.” Booker’s rumbled purr was lower than he had ever heard it before, and Joe’s mouth promptly dried out at what he said next. “Nicky wants to feed it to me with his mouth.”

Joe weakly nodded at the new information that had come to light from Booker’s request, and tried not to die from a poorly timed heart attack as Nicky slowly licked up the trail of precome dripping past Joe’s balls, over his own hand, and finally up to the dark head of Joe’s cock. 

Joe couldn’t hold back a strangled sounding whimper as the tip of Nicky’s tongue neatly dipped into the slit of his urethra before gently angling Booker’s head so that Joe had a decent view of the two of them, and finally let his slick mouthful of precome slide onto Booker’s waiting tongue.

Booker blissfully moaned even as Nicky firmly held him in place by his jaw, and Joe made a noise that he didn’t even recognize as human as Nicky lazily let Booker lick out the last traces of it left in Nicky’s mouth while they watched Joe out of the corners of their eyes.

“It’s good, isn’t it, Kitten?”

Booker’s answering noise was all contentment and pleasure, and if Joe actually wept a little out of thankfulness and pent up desire when Nicky finally flipped Joe onto his hands and knees, none of them had the nerve to bring it up.

Joe thought that he might actually vibrate out of his skin in the brief amount of time that it took to get both Booker and himself into a comfortable position, but they eventually settled on Joe holding onto the headboard for dear life as Booker neatly bracketed Joe’s hips with his legs while his belly pressed up against Joe’s.

His death grip on the bed frame actually had three separate, but correlating reasons behind it. The first reason was that his balance was actually a little compromised by how close his knees were forced together in the confines of Booker’s outstretched legs, so he actually needed something steady to hold onto.

His secondary excuse was that he didn’t want to chance slipping at a bad moment and accidently crushing Booker under his and Nicky’s combined weight, even if there was an excellent chance that their second youngest lover would survive it.

Of course, Joe strongly suspected that permanently dying during a steamy threesome with people Booker actually liked wouldn’t even appear on Booker’s Top Five Hundred Worst Ways Of Dying List.

The last reason was a purely selfish and double pronged one, which were the two facts that Joe occasionally got off on having his hands restrained during sex, and that his neck and chest were now attractively displayed in easy reach of Booker’s wickedly talented mouth and hands. 

Booker indulgently sucked Joe’s nipple into his mouth the moment that the final thought crossed his mind, and Joe did his very best to keep his brain from melting as Booker’s teeth lightly brushed across the sensitive spot while Nicky’s heavy cock dragged against Joe’s inner thigh with a flare of heat.

“Are you ready for me, Joe?"

Warmth was radiating from both of his lovers as Nicky pressed himself against Joe’s back with a softly spoken murmur, and Joe found himself panting slightly from both Booker’s busily moving mouth and his rising body temperature as he jerkily nodded. 

“I need your actual words, my love.” Joe shuddered with a low pleading noise as one of Nicky’s hands brushed over his ribs lightly enough to raise Joe’s skin into gooseflesh in the wake of it passing over him. “Don’t you want to show Booker how to be good and ask for the things that you want?” 

Joe might’ve been the incurable romantic in this relationship, but there was no curing Nicky of being the most warm hearted, protective and quietly sadistic teasing pain in the ass that Joe had ever met. He wouldn’t change him for the world, but Joe would appreciate it if he could just take a nod as a good enough confirmation during sex for once in his life.

“Please get inside me, Nicolo.” Joe arched up into Nicky’s steadying hands as they firmly tugged him backwards, and shivered in breathless anticipation as Nicky’s warm, solid body pressed against the small of his back and ass. “I need the both of you.”

There was a tiny pause before Nicky spoke with a deliberately innocent tone.

“I think we both need you to elaborate on that. Get inside you where, exactly?”

Joe snarled as he hurled all the deeply pissed off, massively unflattering curses that he could remember from across the span of centuries at the infuriating asshole that he had married, and if he happened to tell Nicky exactly where to shove it in harshly hissed Hebrew, that was just a happy coincidence-

His blistering review of Nicky’s character got abruptly cut off with a gasp as Nicky suddenly pushed into him in one rough shove that made his extremities tingle as his cock jerked against Booker’s in the slick confines of Booker’s capable hands.

“I knew you would get there eventually, Hayati. Don’t you feel so much better now that you’ve asked nicely?”

Joe didn’t bother dignifying that with a verbal answer or even a head shake, seeing how he was pretty sure that he wouldn’t be able to form words even if he tried, since Nicky’s perfect slapping thrusts against him had pretty much shut down everything but the parts of Joe’s instinctual hindbrain that dealt with the primal act of procreation.

Booker’s blissfully rough hands were pumping their cocks together in a tempo that nearly matched the same rhythm that Nicky was pistoning in and out of him at, and Joe rolled his hips into it as a pleasure fueled thought drifted across his mind.

He needed to be closer to Booker. Joe lazily shifted his grip on the headboard before bowing his head down in a move that pleasantly stretched his neck and back, and unceremoniously buried his face into the side of Booker’s neck.

Yes, this is exactly what he needed. Joe found that he didn’t want to do much more than kiss and lick at Booker’s sweat coated throat as Booker arched and grinded against him, since just having the two of them almost as close as humanly possible was checking off all of his boxes.

Booker was saying something as Joe dreamily mouthed at his stubbled neck, and he forcibly made his pleasure addled mind do its job as he reached down with one hand to absently roll one of Booker’s nipples between his fingers. 

“What was that, Booker?” Nicky plowed into him at an especially good angle, and Joe ruthlessly tightened himself around his husband just to make him gasp out some breathless Italian terms of endearments as he blinked at Booker. “I missed what you asked the first time.”

“I was worried about you.” Booker was red cheeked with exertion, and Joe questioningly hummed at him while he soothingly pushed Booker’s hair out of his face for him. “You got really quiet, and I wanted to see how you were holding up.”

“I was just thinking about how good you and Nicky feel against me.” He could feel the vibration from Nicky’s pleased growl through his back, and Joe smiled as he steadily pushed closer to his climax, which was somewhat helped along by the way that he could tell that Nicky was a bit closer to coming than he was. “You mentioned something else as well, Sebastian. What was it?”

Booker’s expressive face flickered through a handful of emotions as he squirmed at Joe’s question, and Joe was pretty sure that Booker finally settled on what looked like wide eyed fear combined with immovable trust. Joe honestly didn’t know what Booker had said before he surfaced from his pleasurable mental haze, but anything that put that look on his face had to be serious.

“It’s alright, love, we’ve got you.” Something bumped against his side, and Joe felt a ball of fierce pride and love burn in his chest as he glanced over to see that Nicky had twisted enough to tenderly hold Booker’s hand with his own. “You don’t have to tell us if you really don’t want to.” 

“It’s okay. I think that I’m still pretty loose from when I had fingered myself earlier.” The fear vanished completely from Booker’s face, and Joe tried to memorize the genuinely happy grin that replaced it. “If you want to do it, Joe, I’d like it if you could try to climax in me. Don’t push in with anything more than the head of your cock, of course-” 

The overwhelming happiness that was sourced from Booker’s sudden breakthrough broke free in the form of an entirely undignified laugh of joy as Booker gave Joe’s erection a casually evaluating look.

“-Or two inches, tops. I’m talking honest to God, American inches here, not the fucking Napoleonic inch measurements. I will notice, and you will get yelled at if you try to pull any of that ‘Oops, I really thought my ten inch cock was only two inches long’ bullshit-”

Joe paused Booker’s uncharacteristic chattiness with a soft kiss, and he could feel Booker’s suddenly irrepressible smile against his own even while Booker kissed him back.

“I’d be honored to do that for you, Booker.” Joe pulled away from him a little as Nicky resumed screwing him without letting go of Booker’s raised hand, and Joe flashed a wicked grin down at him.

“I do think that you’re exaggerating my physical capabilities a little, though. I mean, you’re going to be lucky if you get even a measly inch, because my dick isn’t that much longer than that. I honestly have no idea where you got the ten inch measurement from, because I’m barely scraping along with what I’ve got. Isn’t that right, Nicky?”

“Yes, I’ve often found myself wishing that you were just a bit bigger when you’re crammed down my esophagus or up my fucking ass.” 

Joe smugly smirked as Nicky’s gasped words fell comically short of the deeply sarcastic tone that he had been aiming for, and internally squeezed as hard as he could around him as Nicky’s thrusts picked up speed. “I’m getting close. How are you two holding up?”

“I’m getting pretty close as well. Maybe a bit behind you.” Joe leisurely rolled his hips back against Nicky’s in a serpentine motion as he lazily played with Booker’s twitching cock. “Booker?”

“Getting there.” Joe shakily exhaled as Booker smoothly hooked two of his fingers into himself, which was just a few inches away from where Joe was experimenting with how Booker prefered his hand-jobs.

“I’m looking forward to feeling you inside me.” Booker’s warm smile warped into a pleased smirk as both Nicky and Joe twitched at his words. “I’m also eager to see what Nicky tastes like, since you so rudely took away my snack last time.”

Joe couldn’t help but laugh at the somewhat gargled despairing noise that Nicky produced as he exasperatedly buried his face between Joe’s shoulder blades. 

He could recognize the muffled handful of Christian saints that his husband was invoking, but he missed a few of the more exotic growled curses that followed shortly afterwards. Joe only laughed harder when Nicky told him to stop clenching like that, he was already on tenterhooks already without Joe’s extra squeezing being added on.

“Make me.” Joe sassily clenched down again as he shot a cocky smirk over his shoulder at Nicky, who was glaring at him even as he rocked into Joe at an increasingly erratic pace. “Or are you too scared to do that?”

“Brats. Why am I constantly surrounded by them? Did I do something in a past life to deserve this?” Nicky’s hiss was almost as vicious as the pace that he was ramming into Joe at, and he refused to show just how good Nicky’s hands felt on him. “Honestly, I’m pretty sure that Nile is the only person around here that wouldn’t be bratty just for the fun of it.”

“No, she’s a sassy little shit as well.” Booker slyly winked up at the two of them, and Joe squirmed in mounting pleasure as Nicky’s fingers dug a little harder into his hips. “Brats might just be your type, Nicky, even if you can’t do anything to keep us in line.”

Yes, they were deliberately winding Nicky up into his little play act of anger, but Nicky’s snarl as he roughly bit between Joe’s neck and shoulder while climaxing inside him still sent a sharp fission of pleasure through Joe that almost put him over the edge.

Nicky was already apologetically kissing the small wound that had healed as fast as it had been formed, but Joe was occupied with trying to put off his own pent up orgasm that was trying to burn its way through him. 

Joe clamped his hand around the base of himself to stave it off for a few more critical seconds, and hastily cupped Booker’s face with his free hand while he watched him with wide eyes.

“Do you still want to do this, Sebastien?”

“Yes, I do.” Booker’s eyes were filled with happy anticipation, and Joe smiled back at him as Booker shimmied backwards a little, his normally assured movements all turned to awkwardly figuring out what angle to tip his hips at so that Joe could easily push inside him. “Come on, Joe, get your third leg over here so that we can do this.”

Joe blushed at the warmly approving noise that Nicky made while Joe gently tugged Booker’s pelvis up by a few more degrees. Joe happily co-operated as Booker pulled him down into a kiss by looping his arms around the back of Joe’s neck, and he distractedly let Booker’s tongue delve into his mouth as he carefully pushed the head of himself into Booker’s ass.

The warm, tight heat of Booker immediately dissolved the flimsy layer of self control that Joe had been using to stave off his orgasm, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he shuddered his way through the blissful release that came with it.

He held himself together enough to make sure that he didn’t go an inch deeper into Booker than he had promised to, even if the twitching ring of muscle stretched around him promised a temporary paradise if he sank all the way into Booker.

Joe firmly ignored the traitorous impulse that could only lead to trouble, and instead murmured all the soft praises that he could think as he let Booker pull him as close as he wanted to while his quivering hands dug bruises into Joe’s neck and shoulders.

“You’re so fucking big, Joe.” Booker’s voice came out in a shaking keen, and Joe gritted his teeth as he carefully angled himself so that he wouldn’t slip any further inside than he already was as Booker restlessly squirmed underneath him.

“Merde, I can’t quite-” Joe soothingly stroked Booker’s side as his softening cock slipped out of Booker while the younger man pumped himself with an almost painful looking desperation to get off as he harshly whined underneath Joe. 

A rough noise burst out of Booker even as he arched into his own hand, and Joe felt a swell of gratitude as Nicky ducked down to help Joe with gently prying Booker’s hand off of himself before he could accidently hurt himself as he softly petted Booker’s cheek with a sweep of his thumb.

“It’s okay, just take it easy, Booker. I know you want to get off, but that’s not going to help you get there.” 

It took a long moment, but Joe could feel Booker eventually manage a shaky nod into the side of Joe’s neck.

“We can help you get there. What would you like us to do?” Joe could almost hear Booker’s thoughts whirring along as he visibly tried to figure what he wanted, and he finally blinked in surprise when Booker hoarsely asked him a question.

“You know how you didn’t want Nicky’s mouth on you earlier, Joe?” Joe hummed in acknowledgment even as he shared a meaningful look over the top of Booker’s head with Nicky. “Does it usually feel good when he licks you down there?”

“It usually feels amazing when we get a chance to do that, Booker. Nicky’s always taken good care of me when he does that.” He dropped an encouraging kiss on the top of his head as Booker twisted around enough to look at Nicky.

“Nicky, do you want to taste me down there?” Booker’s voice lowered by a few impossible degrees, and Joe got a devastating view of Booker glancing up at Nicky through his half lowered eyelashes. “Joe made me all messy in there. I think I need your help cleaning up.”

Joe couldn’t but grin as the banked fire of desire in his beloved’s green eyes blazed back into an inferno, and encouragingly kneaded at Booker’s hip while he felt the tiny tremble that worked through Booker’s body in the aftermath of asking for what he wanted.

“I’ll do my very best for you, Booker.” A mischievous spark of amusement twitched Nicky’s mouth to the side as he tipped Booker’s face up for a kiss. “Granted, I’m not sure if rimming Joe for nearly a thousand years really counts towards having any experience doing that.” 

“I should’ve known that comment was going to come back and bite me in the ass.” Joe could feel Booker practically vibrating in his arms as he visibly tried to pull himself back together with his usual comebacks, and he nuzzled in against Booker’s neck as his voice audibly wobbled a little. “Would it be easier for you if I was on my back or on my knees?”

“I don’t have a strong preference either way, so just go with whatever makes you feel more comfortable.” 

“I think I’d prefer it if I was on my knees.” Booker was sounding more confident about his decision by the second, so Joe took the opportunity to helpfully roll Booker and himself so that their positions were reversed from earlier. 

Booker jolted a little from the sudden move, but his erection was still digging into Joe’s hip as he started to eagerly squirm on top of him again. “Thanks, Joe. I have to say, Nicky, I was expecting you to have a snarky comment about biting me in the ass.”

“You would’ve had to very nicely ask for it first if I was going to bite you there for our first time together.” Joe had an excellent view of Booker from his position below him, and he could instantly tell the exact moment that Nicky started soothingly stroking Booker’s sides as he simultaneously trailed kisses down his back. Booker’s pupils widened at the first contact of Nicky’s mouth as his cock started dripping a small puddle of pre-come onto Joe’s stomach.

“Try to lean down and relax, Booker.” Nicky’s voice was a little muffled from where Joe could see him pressing affectionate kisses onto the thin skin of Booker’s hip, but he still flashed a quick wink at Joe when he caught sight of him.

“Go ahead and kiss Joe a bit. Or bicker a little, whichever one that turns you on more. It’s not like I can really tell the difference with you two anymore, anyway.”

“I’m not sure if you really want us fighting about which soccer team is better right now, Nicky.” Joe chuckled into Booker’s mouth as he leaned down for a needy kiss, and held him closer as he watched Nicky urge Booker’s hips up by a few degrees while he gently pushed Booker’s ass cheeks apart with a very predatory smile.

“Oh! Or your awful choices in snacks when we were trying to get across the Canadian border-” Joe contently hummed at the sight of Nicky burying his face where Booker needed him the most, and the loud sound of Nicky lewdly moaning mid-lick could be clearly heard just as Booker started falling apart with a sharp, pleading cry of Nicky’s name.

Joe couldn’t speak to whether or not Booker had always been a bundle of raw nerves and sensitivity during sex, but he was certainly reacting to Nicky and Joe touching him like a electrified live wire now. 

Thankfully, all of the wordless noises that he was smothering against Joe’s neck couldn’t have sounded more encouraging or euphoric if Booker tried, so Joe happily petted and kissed all the parts of Booker that he could reach while he writhed and twisted on top of Joe like a hooked eel.

Booker gasped something that could’ve almost passed for an actual plea for more in French if the person listening to him was feeling extremely generous in the linguistic department, and Nicky was apparently acting as that thoughtful individual as he pulled Booker’s frantically squirming hips back towards him with a hungry growl.

It was tricky enough trying to pin Booker down in ordinary situations, and it was apparently even harder to pull off when he was mindlessly chasing after his climax while Nicky wrestled with him in an attempt to keep his mouth where it was supposed to be without throwing Booker off his wave of cresting pleasure.

“Try to hold still for a second, Booker. Nicky wants to get his hand on you before you go off.”

Nicky grunted in agreement with Joe’s softly spoken suggestion, and Booker’s eyes narrowed at him with a flicker of faint focused annoyance before he dropped his head onto Joe’s collarbone with a long, drawn out groan as he stilled himself a little. 

His hips were still twitching back and forth in small movements while he dug his fingers into Joe's back, but it was more than enough for Nicky to loosen his grip on one of Booker’s hips before wrapping his fist around Booker’s leaking cock. 

It only took a couple of pumps of Nicky’s hand to make Booker come as he spilled over Joe’s stomach with a thin, shaking whine, and he made sure to kiss the side of Booker’s head as Nicky started to pull away from him.

Joe could feel Booker tensing against him as soon as he lost contact with Nicky, and Booker instantly reached backwards to clumsily pat at Nicky’s head with a dazed sounding request.

“I want to keep going if you can do it.” Booker was already back to lazily rutting against Joe’s hip as he remained blissfully unaware of Nicky staring at the back of his head with an expression of gleeful awe and dawning hope. “Want to see how long I can hold up like that.”

Well, that was Booker’s inadvertent early Christmas present for Nicky, even if he wasn’t wrapped up with a pretty red bow.

Joe was well aware of Nicky’s sexual fantasy of relentlessly dragging somebody past the point of climax again and again without pause until his partner finally gave out from either exhaustion or inability to keep going, which was something that only the two of them knew about until this point.

Sadly, that was also one of the few things that Joe had tried and failed to give Nicky multiple times over the span of their relationship, and he had never quite been able to drag it out long enough to appease Nicky to the degree that his sweet little sadistic soulmate wanted. 

Joe was perfectly happy to lay back and let somebody else take a crack at it if Booker really wanted to be the metaphorical sacrificial lamb for Nicky to work his lifelong sexual fantasy out on.

Nicky suddenly yanked the younger man’s hips back up with a jerk and less than gentle sounding purr of anticipation, and promptly dove back in as Booker let a shuddering moan into his pillow. 

He wasn’t entirely sure of how long Nicky and Booker stayed locked together in their endless loop of giving and taking pleasure in each other, but Joe was starting to wonder if the supernatural healing was coming handy in the stamina department as he kept a sleepy eye on the proceedings. 

Joe had totally given up on keeping track of which one of them was panting and shivering through their latest orgasm, even though the both of them had appeared to run out of semen a while ago. He was, however, pretty sure that their collective total had to be creeping towards the double digits when Booker suddenly made his first protesting noise.

Nicky propped his face on the small of Booker’s back while he made an unintelligible slurring noise that sounded vaguely interrogative in nature.

Booker gave an affirmative grunt in response as he swayed upright on his visibly wobbly hands and knees.

Nicky made a pleased sounding huff back at Booker, and that was all the warning Joe received before the two of them crashed down onto him like two very heavy and fucked out sacks of rocks.

Joe immediately wheezed as he hastily tried to shift into a position where he didn’t have nearly four hundred pounds of almost dead weight crushing the air out of his lungs.

Booker apparently noticed his sudden dilemma first, because he made what looked like a gargantuan effort to roll off Joe while he feebly kicked at Nicky until the other man gracelessly fell off onto the mattress on Joe’s other side.

“Thanks, guys. That was very considerate of you both.” Joe’s semi-sarcastic thank you came out in more a squeak than he was willing to admit to himself or anybody else.

“Mmhm.” Nicky and Booker both seemed to be making strides towards communicating with actual words again as they weakly wriggled up against his sides, and Joe smiled to himself as he combed his fingers through both sets of sweat tangled hair.

“You two done for the night?” Joe fondly patted both of their heads as they groaned in near unison.

“We might be able to clean up a bit with the pack of baby wipes in my bag.” 

“Mmm.” They sounded marginally happier at that prospect, and Joe bit his lip as he glanced over at the bedside alarm clock.

“We’ve only got six and a half hours to clean up and sleep before we have to get up in the morning and go over the plan before going after Max.”

Their shared whine sounded pretty damn sad.

\--

“Do you want any coffee, Cougar?”

Cougar wordlessly held his hand up over his shoulder with his index finger and thumb pinched almost together while he kept cracking eggs into the massive salad bowl in front of him with the other hand. A little bit, then.

Joe nodded at the silent request, and adjusted the amount of coffee that he was shoveling into the coffee percolator that had come with the Airbnb. 

The machine really fell neatly into the middle between the fancy, nearly space aged coffee set up that Nicky used when he was trying to impress Joe and Booker, and the horrific and oddly sticky liquid that his beloved actually preferred to drink.

Hundreds of years together, and Nicky still seemed to be under the impression that Joe didn’t know that his husband was not so secretly the most semi-feral trash eating raccoon that Joe had ever met. 

He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about it or what Nicky liked to eat, but Joe still had a carefully maintained eighty-five year old streak of not accepting any sandwich that Nicky had a hand in creating.

A man had to have his limits, after all.

“Is there anything that they won’t eat in scrambled eggs?”

“Booker doesn’t like blue cheese or eggplant.” 

Joe happily leaned back into the hand that Andy had cupped over the back of his neck as she slipped past him with a full grocery bag swinging from her hand. Andy paused mid-step, and Joe smiled as he felt her winding one of his curls around her finger in thought before she continued speaking.

“Nicky will eat nearly anything you put on a plate, and I’m not crazy about mushrooms. I’ll get started on the pancakes as soon as I hang up my coat.”

With that, Andy lightly tugged on his lock of hair one last time before she dropped the groceries on the table and strode off to her room. 

Joe knew perfectly well from previous experience that the odds were really only fifty-fifty that she would actually remember her promise to make pancakes, so Joe decided to go ahead and get started on them just to be on the safe side of things.

“You’re good without bacon?”

There wasn’t any judgement or accusation in Cougar’s steady brown eyes as he glanced up at Joe, and the knot of worry that had started forming in Joe’s chest unraveled in one smooth motion. 

Everybody had been able to easily figure out that there weren’t any toxic hatred or fears lurking in Cougar within the first few days of knowing him, and the thought of him raising his hackles over other people’s religions was a laughable thought. Joe relaxed as he shook his head with a small smile.

“Thank you. I don’t eat pork if I don’t have to. Do you know if we have any more of that leftover roasted sweet potato laying around?”

“Si. Grab it out of the fridge and I’ll fry it up in a different pan for you.”

They passed a few tranquil minutes ducking around each other as they tried to cook enough food for themselves and their gradually awakening teammates, and Joe was half listening to the amusing sounds of Booker and Nicky staggering into the kitchen when Cougar calmly spoke again.

“Andy mentioned a few things about Nile to me last night.” Cougar flipped the frying pan of sizzling sweet potatoes with a sniper’s precision, and the chunks of the cubed vegetable neatly thudded back into the pan as Booker and Nicky froze behind him. “It was mostly in regards to her romantic relationship with the three of you. How’s that going for you?”

“It’s a new relationship for all four of us, but we all care very deeply for her.” 

Joe hadn’t expected Booker to eloquently answer Cougar’s question before he or Nicky could come up with a decent one, but Booker was already carefully watching over the rim of his coffee mug for the signs of Cougar’s reaction.

After all, it had been obvious from the brief stories that Cougar had shared about Nile that Cougar regarded her as another particularly well loved little sister.

“Are the four of you happy together?”

“Very much so.” Nicky had a core of steel clad certainty in his voice, and Joe glanced away from the box’s pancake measurement chart to find that Nicky was watching both him and Booker with a broad contented smile.

“Is everything you do together consensual?”

“We wouldn’t do it any other way.”

“Excellent. Can one of you grab the butter out of the fridge for me?”

“Wait. Was that the entirety of your warning speech?” Booker looked more alarmed at the prospect of Cougar’s line of questioning suddenly ending than he had at the start of them being ambushed with it. 

Cougar warmly huffed in amusement while he gestured for Joe to bring a bowl over for the cooked eggs.

“Nile wouldn’t date the three of you if any of you needed to be threatened in order to treat her well. I’m just glad the four of you are happy together.” 

Cougar suddenly grimaced at something, and Joe followed his gaze to where their hastily put together plan for taking down Max was sprawled halfway across the kitchen table. 

“Well, happier than I feel about the plan at the very least. I don’t have a great feeling about it.”

“All of our intel seemed pretty solid, and we put together a decent plan, Cougar. It should be fine-” Andy suddenly cursed behind Joe, and he ruefully shook his head at her suddenly apologetic tone as she changed the conversational course. “Fuck! Sorry, Joe, I totally forgot about the pancakes.”

Their delicately constructed optimism came charging back to bite them in the ass less than thirteen hours later.  
\--  
Their clusterfuck of a mission had almost instantaneously fallen prey to the one rule that was almost as immortal as they were. Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

The compound's layout was just different enough from the blueprints in their possession to seriously trip them up while Andy grumpily complied with being forced into the sniper’s position despite having the least amount of experience with it.

It had only gotten worse once Nicky and Booker had managed to get into the guts of the compound, and there had been a dicey moment over the comms when Booker just barely managed to prevent Nicky from accidently blowing their legs off when he missed a trip wire strung across an office doorway.

Their comms system kept erratically beeping in and out without reason, and their main method of communication for the last half hour had mostly been a mix of whisper-screaming at each other and some hastily pulled together hand signals.

There was almost triple the number of enemy combatants that they had prepared and armed for, and Joe was currently doing his very best to keep Cougar’s head from being shot off.

It was easier said than done, since Cougar and Joe were taking cover behind two very far apart cars that were rapidly getting more pieces blown off by the handful of heavily armed guards that nobody had managed to pick off yet. 

There was also the tiny hiccup of being unable to let Cougar in on the fact that the majority of his team were functionally immortal.

Joe was not having a good night. The fact that nobody else in his general vicinity was having a good one either was a terrible consolation prize.

“Left!”

Joe instantly threw himself in the direction that Cougar had screamed at him, and narrowly avoided the large caliber rifle bullet that tore off a chunk of the car’s frame that had been directly in front of where his head had been resting. 

He flashed a thumbs up of thanks at where Cougar was doing some very impressive work with the scraps of ammunition left to his name, and Joe managed to catch a quick glimpse of Cougar’s face before he whipped around to drop the guard who had torn up Joe’s cover.

Cougar’s eyes had been emotionlessly blanked out without anything left behind to get in the way of what he was doing, and a snap of faint recognition flared through Joe without the actual memory of where he had seen that exact look before.

“There’s none of Max’s warheads here.” Nicky’s clipped voice could be heard perfectly through his earwig despite the erratic roar of gunfire zipping over Joe’s head, and he felt a cannonball of disappointment drop into his stomach at the bad news. Nicky’s next words sounded infinitely more pleased than his last ones.

“We did find a shipping container of the money that he was probably going to use to pay for them, though. We just finished setting it on fire before heading out of there. Is there anything we can do to help get you two out of there?”

“Well, I’d appreciate it if anybody had some small to medium sized explosives that they could spare right now.” Andy’s voice was a rabid snarl of frustration even as Joe heard her near continuously loading and firing Nicky’s loaned out sniper rifle. “I’ve got ten guards pinning Joe and Cougar down. As soon as they’re clear, we’re bugging out.” 

There was a small, static filled pause before Booker’s gleeful voice could be barely heard over Nicky’s fond sigh.

“Booker just found a fully loaded grenade launcher. He’s saying that it’ll work perfectly for that particular purpose.” Booker said something that couldn’t be clearly made out, and Nicky dryly spoke again. “He loves it. He’s breaking up with us for it. It’s name- sorry, her name is Clarissa. Firing in ten.”

Joe faintly made out the sound of breaking glass coming from the over-looking building at their backs a few seconds later, and he could almost feel Booker’s grim sense of satisfaction as three grenades hurtled over their heads and promptly got rid of the last few stragglers that were still trying to kill them.

A few moments of ringing silence fell over the semi-destroyed compound in the wake of that much death, and Joe shakily exhaled in a sigh. He had never grown fond of causing death over the centuries. It was a small point of pride for him.

“Santa Maria. What a -”

The quiet rasp of Cougar’s voice jolted to a sudden stop, and Joe instantly twisted sideways to find that Cougar’s wide eyes were staring just over Joe’s shoulder.

“Right! Joe, go right-”

His brain kicked into gear a second too late, and Joe watched in mute horror as Cougar was thrown backwards in a spray of blood despite his efforts to try and launch himself out of the way of the unseen gunman. Joe barely had the chance to register the next bullet burrowing through his brain before familiar death came for him.

“They should’ve chopped you up for spare parts when they had the chance to.”

He was being hastily dragged along by his ankle over the rubble strewn concrete, and Joe hoarsely gasped for a lungful of air as a flood of adrenaline and fear washed through him in a tidal wave as the stranger’s words and actions finally registered with his still healing brain.

They were taking him back, and then they were all going to be caught and brought back to that lab to be pulled apart again. Joe choked on the bitter tasting bile of terror that suddenly filled his mouth as he tried to twist free of the man’s tight grip on his leg.

His head suddenly bounced off Cougar’s mud splattered boot, and Joe scrabbled to hold onto his sword as he felt blood slicked fingers try to pry the hilt out of his hand as he was pulled along the ground. The slim hand won the brief tug of war over his own weapon, and his heart leapt into his throat at Cougar’s sibilant hiss.

“How much would it cost for a double session with your wife and mother, hombre?”

The man dragging him spun back towards Cougar with a snarled curse, and Cougar managed to sever the Achilles’s tendon at the back of the stranger’s right leg moments later with a clumsy swipe of Joe’s sword. 

The guard shrieked as he limply dropped to the ground, and Joe caught his first sight of the origin of Cougar’s nickname when Cougar hurled himself on top of the downed man with bared teeth and a venomous snarl of rage.

It was obviously more of Cougar’s weight being behind it than the actual technique of his double handed grasp of Joe’s sword, but the blade still got planted through the man’s skull in one lurching gesture.

“Joe!” 

He had just finished his hasty struggle to sit up when he got quickly taken down again by Cougar protectively throwing himself on top of Joe.

Cougar’s hands were frantically crushing against his skull where the bullet had gone through his head just moments before, and Joe’s stomach turned over as he tried to get the panicked sniper off of him so that he could figure out where Cougar had gotten shot.

After all, Cougar probably wouldn’t have got hit if he hadn’t taken the few crucial seconds to try and warn Joe about the incoming gunman, and Joe tried not to give into the sick feeling of guilt as Booker and Nicky finally reached them.

“No, Joe, hold on-” Cougar’s pleading turned into a enraged hiss when Nicky yanked him off of Joe with a strained grunt, and Joe stifled a pained noise as Cougar’s fingers knotted themselves into Joe’s hair in a desperate attempt to hang onto him.

He felt Booker’s hands briskly free him from Cougar’s grasp without a lot of undue care to be gentle about it, and Joe finally rolled away as Nicky forced Cougar to the ground with some wordless soothing noises while Booker tried to quickly look the other man over.

“Small caliber round in his upper thigh. I don’t think it hit bone, but- Nicky, can you try to flip him so I can see if it exited through the other side?”

“No.” It looked like it was taking almost all of Nicky’s considerable effort just to keep Cougar pinned down, and a vein in Nicky’s neck was jumping as he jerked his head downwards. “Tourniquet him with my belt. We have to bring him to a doctor.”

“Knack.” Cougar was still shuddering a bit in Nicky’s arms, but he seemed to calming down a little bit as Booker pulled off Nicky’s belt before tightly tying it around Cougar’s upper thigh.

“What? No, Cougar, we don’t need that.” Booker was already frantically stabbing at his phone’s screen with rough jabs of his finger, and Joe managed to hand over his copy of the card with the phone number that Joe was pretty sure that Booker was trying to hunt down. “Thanks, Joe. I think she’s going to be our best shot to get him help here.”

Andy brought the Suburban skidding to a halt next to them, and Joe dragged Cougar into the backseat with Nicky’s help as Booker threw himself into the front seat while his phone call started going through.

“Pick up, pick up, pick-”

“Doctor Al-Kaysani here. How can I help you?”

Joe must’ve heard sweeter sounds than his cousin promptly answering her phone, but he wasn’t coming up with any examples beyond the tired rasp of Drew’s voice.

\--

“Is that Drew?”

Andy’s tense voice barked out her question as she whipped around the last curve to their destination, and Joe quickly leaned over enough to squint out the windshield at the morgue’s empty parking lot, which only had one human soul standing in it. 

Drew’s lean figure was beautifully back lit by the massive flood lights lighting up the parking lot, and Joe couldn’t help but visually appreciate the way it was casting a golden halo around her and the gurney that she was motionlessly waiting next to. 

Drew lifted her head at the sound of the Suburban skidding across the parking lot, and Joe couldn’t help but smile back at the white flash of her grin as she immediately broke into a sprint while pushing the gurney in front of her in a direct path to their vehicle.

She was also moving at a much faster clip than Joe had been expecting, and Booker had to hastily slap at the side of Andy’s seat to get her to unlock the doors.

“That’s her, Andy, open the door already!”

The locks unclicked in one simultaneous noise just seconds before Drew ripped Nicky’s door open and launched herself into the vehicle in a flash of rumpled green scrubs and long brown limbs. 

Nicky let out a squeak that Joe hadn’t heard in years, and laughter burst out of him as Joe realized that his husband wasn’t sure where to put his hands with a sudden lapful of a semi-related surgeon.

“Well, aren’t you just gorgeous, Green Eyes. That’s a real cute beauty mark that you’ve got on your cheek, too. You’re going to make a girl get all envious if you keep being so beautiful in this awful lighting.”

Nicky’s cheeks were flushing a bright pink under the rapid fire barrage of flattery being directed at him as Drew hastily crawled her way across his lap, but she gently patted his shoulder moments later as she climbed over him. 

“Don’t worry, handsome, I’m just a little overwhelmed with feeling like the fucking Crypt-Keeper in a car full of gorgeous people. Don’t get me wrong, it's a very appropriate feeling for Halloween night, but I would’ve tried to look a little cuter for the occasion if I was going to know how damn pretty you all are.”

“Well, I think that you look fantastic, Drew.” Booker was already rolling out of his open door as he spoke, and Joe exchanged a brisk nod with Andy as she impatiently waited for Nicky to get out so that they could lift Cougar onto the waiting gurney. “The man who got shot is-”

“-Carlos Alvarez, though he prefers being called Cougar by his friends.” 

Drew’s brown eyes were flashing with vivid irritation as she carefully started sliding Cougar along the seat while she kept talking at the fast clip of an annoyed older sibling complaining about a younger one.

“He’s also the former apprentice that took up twenty-five precious months of my life, so he better wake the fuck up now!” 

Cougar’s eyes flashed open at Drew’s howled final word, and Joe got a very good look at Cougar’s suddenly petrified face as he carefully helped Drew and Booker lift him onto the gurney.

“Knack?”

“Do you know anybody else who trained you for over two years and is going to pull a bullet out of your leg with all the professional decorum that the American medical system has endowed them with?” 

The fire of affectionate exasperation was still blazing in Drew’s eyes as she carefully shifted Cougar into place, and Joe hastily kicked Nicky’s door shut before everybody started jogging towards the building’s only open door.

“Clay might also qualify for that.” Cougar’s deeply sheepish answer was offered up in a meekly stunned tone that Joe had never heard the stoic man produce before.

He decided to blame Cougar’s moderate blood loss for the uncharacteristic move while Cougar rolled his eyes around to stare at Drew’s back as she started running faster in front of them. 

“You’re not swearing at me like you used to, Prima.”

“I’m saving it up until you can stop focusing on not bleeding out. Oh, and if Clay was going to dig a bullet out of you, there’s a damn good chance that he would just do it with a broken beer bottle instead of actual medical equipment.” Cougar let out a low noise that sounded suspiciously close to a whine, and Drew huffed at him even as she led the way down the cold sterile halls. “Cabrón. There, does that make you feel any better?”

“Si.”

“Fantástico.” The false sounding bite of anger in Drew’s voice faded with every long stride that she took, and Joe mutely shifted aside enough to let her give Cougar’s nearest hand two quick squeezes without slowing down in the slightest. “I’ve missed you, Cougar.”

“I’ve missed you too.” Cougar’s slurring voice could barely be heard over the frantic squeak of the gurney’s wheels as the rest of them wordlessly chased after Drew. “Lo siento, Prima. About your eye, and-” Cougar’s voice cracked mid-sentence. “Everything else. I should’ve visited. It was all my fault.”

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault, Cougar. I was a hell of a mess for a very long time, and I know that the event was a lot for everybody to cope with afterwards.” 

Drew abruptly turned down another branch of the hallway, and Joe was immensely grateful for her help with swinging Cougar around the corner even as she dutifully coughed up the stilted words that were said with the mechanical ease of her obviously being told them over and over again. 

“The doctors also told me that you came by a few times when I was still in the medically induced coma.”

If that was supposed to be a comfort for Cougar, it fell short by quite a bit as Cougar’s breath wetly hitched into a broken noise that echoed in through the empty series of hallways. 

Any tears were mostly hidden from sight by Cougar’s hat brim, but Joe could see that Andy was gently cupping Cougar’s cheek with one of her hands as they whirred along.

“You helped save my life, Cougar. You were so brave, and I’m very proud of you.” Drew’s voice settled into the soft rasp of somebody comforting a hurt younger sibling, and Joe felt the almost forgotten twinge of remembering when he had fulfilled that role for his own long dead younger brother and sisters. 

“Cougar was there during the event that caused the loss of my eye. He kept me from bleeding out while holding the exposed part of my brain in the remains of my skull. An injured eye just doesn’t measure up when you have to triage with the other kind of injuries I had going on at the time.”

Booker and Nicky both glanced up to meet his horrified stare from the other side of the gurney that they were helping push along, and he felt certain that they were all sharing the same thought. What the hell had happened to Drew?

They finally blew into the freezing metal box of a morgue, and Joe felt immeasurably thankful for Drew instantly setting them all to individual tasks that were going to help Cougar in the long run.

An adrenaline fueled rush of activity followed quickly after, which was filled to the brim with introductions, scrubbing, and Drew’s carefully concise instructions that made it clear that even though she was working with a pack of amateurs, she still had no intention of letting them inadvertently fuck up in any shape or form.

“Sebastian, can you give Joe a hand cutting Cougar’s clothing off? I can't do much else until I can give him a better look over.”

“Don’t cut the hat.” Joe gave Cougar’s shoulder a reassuring pat in exchange for Cougar’s hazily murmured warning, and moved over enough to let Booker gently pull off Cougar’s boots.

“You can call me Booker if you want to, Drew.” Joe mimicked Andy’s slowly growing smile as they listened to Booker open up in a carefully crafted tone that almost disguised how hard he was trying to be casual about it. “I know that Sebastian can be a bit of a mouthful to say.”

“Booker. You beautiful babe of a man. You obviously never had two enormous nerds of parents who tried to pack your entire ancestry into you and your sisters names.”

Joe felt his interest piqued at the mention of his extended family, and looked up to find Drew despairingly shaking her head with a wide smile. 

“Seriously, the struggle is real. Sebastien is easy compared to all of that.”

“It can’t be that bad. I’m sure that you and your sister's names are perfectly normal.”

“Drucilla, Aello, and Odyssey. That’s not even getting into our middle names, and we’re just lucky that Mom decided not to hyphenate her maiden name with Dad’s.”

Andy made a skeptical noise at Drew’s firmly spoken statement, and Drew grinned at her even as she simultaneously made sure all of Cougar’s limbs and nerves were working while she briskly strapped the blood pressure cuff around his bicep.

“I could’ve ended up being called Drucilla Alejandra Yiannopoulos-Al-Kaysani, Andy. At that point it just looks like somebody tried and almost succeeded at shoving most of the English alphabet into a name.” 

“That is… a bit rough.”

“It could’ve been even worse than that. Dad’s always said that he was really pushing to call me Hatshepsut. Don’t get me wrong, the lady was a badass pharaoh, but I still don’t think I could spell her name correctly on the first go around.”

Andy’s small smile blossomed into a bright flash of a grin, and Joe suddenly knew that Andy could probably personally testify that Hatshepsut was indeed a badass.

“Oh! That reminds me, Joe, your name cropped up on the family tree website that my Dad’s been mapping the family linage on. It turns out that we’re seventh cousins or something like that, though I don’t want to personally work out the odds of us randomly running into each other.” 

The corners of Drew’s eyes were crinkled from the breadth of the smile hidden under her surgical mask, and gratitude washed through Joe once again. 

It was born from a mix of Booker forging enough lies to firmly stick Joseph Al-Kaysani on that map to start with, being able to engage with his family for however long a span it lasted, and that Booker had the common sense to warn Joe that he had done it immediately afterwards.

Despite all of Booker’s feeble protests, Joe knew that the younger man didn’t go out of his way to do it just so it wouldn’t be awkward when Drew and Samara started looking around for their correct last names to put on Booker and Joe’s wedding invitations.

“Really? That’s wonderful!”

Joe had faked surprise and every other emotion human beings could come up with over the centuries, but it was nice to pretend to be surprised for something that was only for the sake of familial warmth and softness. Drew’s shoulder fondly bumped against his own before she took the lead on pulling Cougar back together with the ease of long practice.

Cougar seemed to be floating on a pain killer fueled cloud of relaxation despite being bare naked on a cold morgue table, which only surprised Joe more when Cougar rolled his head around to narrow his eyes at where Drew was bowed over his thigh.

“You still feel okay, Cougar?”

“Mnhm. Wanna ask Drew something.”

“Go for it, Cougar. I’m almost finished down here, anyway.” Drew dabbed at Cougar’s wound with a clean cotton pad before she tilted her head to thoughtfully squint at the much tidier looking hole. “Well, you couldn’t have done a much better job at getting shot if you had tried, so I guess I won’t have to entirely disown you for it.” 

“Why’s your eyes different?” Joe frowned at Cougar’s mumbled question, and he carefully noted the way that Booker defensively shifted at the insensitive phrasing of it. “Before you lost it. It wasn’t that, uhh. Mierda.” Cougar blinked hard for a few moments in a visible search for whichever word he was looking for, and a loopy grin stretched across his face a second later. “Colour! Different colours.”

“Oh. Yeah, I haven’t thought about it much since I lost it. They didn’t have a detailed enough photo of my original right eye to make a realistic prosthetic from it.” Drew jerkily shook her head as she braced herself on the hard steel rim of the table, and she must’ve mistaken Joe’s small noise of worry as confusion. 

“I have-” Drew sharply frowned as she corrected herself. “I had heterochromia. My right eye used to be green. It was a bit darker than Nicky’s. Definitely less blue. I used to get a lot of comments about them.”

“What’s the odds of that happening?” 

“Exactly fifty-fifty, funny enough. When you lose one of your eyes when both of them happen to be totally different colours, it’s pretty much even odds of one of them being hit.” Drew shook her head one more time while roughly clearing her throat before ducking back down over Cougar’s leg.

“Would somebody mind texting Samara to ask her to pick up some replacement clothing for Cougar? She’s supposed to be swinging by soon, and she should be able to squeeze in some shopping if we get ahold of her in the next few minutes.” 

Joe took the deflection for what it was, and busied himself with painstakingly coaxing out clothing measurements from Cougar as he woozily blinked up at him. It took a lot more work than he had thought it would, because even with Cougar doing his best to help, he was still stoned off his ass as he kept accidentally mixing up his hat band size with his sock size.

They eventually got it all out of him as Joe and Nicky asked the questions and clarified Cougar’s stumbling words, and Booker quickly texting the correct answers to Samara as they came in. He widely grinned whenever his phone’s text alert went off, and Joe felt fairly certain that Samara was hurling charm bombs at Booker as fast as she could throw them.

“How did you lose your eye?”

Joe wished for just once that Andy would experience the mortified foot-in-mouth feeling that she frequently inspired in the rest of them whenever she asked a horrifically blunt question when she really shouldn’t have. 

“Well, that was a refreshingly straightforward way of asking that question.” Drew looked faintly amused as she glanced up from where she was pulling the edges of Cougar’s bullet wound back together in a series of tidy stitches. “I’m not legally allowed to discuss how, where, when or why the event happened, but I can tell you about the aftermath if you want to hear about it.” 

Somewhat baffled confusion met her answer, and Drew managed to cheerfully shrug as she quickly knotted the end of Cougar’s stitches. “Non-Disclosure Agreements has been and continues to be a real pain in my ass, even after I retired and got out of that sort of action.”

Cougar made a noise of agreement that managed to sound both drowsy and waspish at the same time. Joe gave him another sympathetic pat for a lack of better options while Nicky and Booker both stared at Drew like they’d be able to read the surface of her thoughts if they both looked hard enough.

“Eight broken and cracked ribs on my right side. Collapsed lung. Punctured liver and kidney on the same side. Shrapnel scattered over my back, neck, and partially over my face and the entire right side of my body. Shattered bones all through my right arm and shoulder.” 

Drew was casually rattling off her previous wounds like she was reciting a particularly boring grocery list, and Joe felt grief rising in his throat as he numbly held onto the edge of the rimmed table. 

“Second and third degree burns on forty percent of my body. A hand sized piece of my skull at the back of my head got splintered, so they had to replace it with a titanium skull plate. They just swapped out my metal joint replacements with ceramic ones last year. Craniofacial reconstruction. The plastic surgeons also had to rebuild my ear and part of my nose.” 

She rolled her head back to thoughtfully squint at the ceiling, and Joe found himself praying with all his might that Drew hadn’t suffered through any other horrific injuries.

“Really, losing the eye was pretty small potatoes compared to everything else. I think going through the skin grafts was the worst part though, because it took me six months in the burn ward just to grow enough skin back to cover everything.” 

Drew frowned down at Cougar’s leg before she triumphantly slapped the table with a grin.

“I also permanently lost my sense of smell and taste at the same time. I can vaguely tell when something is sweet and sour or that sort of thing, but I’ve mostly been working off of texture for the last decade. It’s a little sad, I know, but crunchy is my new favourite food.”

“Drew.”

Joe wasn’t aware of hoarsely saying her name until she looked up at him with her dark doe eyes.

He could easily spot their physical differences with the more time he spent with her, but they could’ve easily passed as siblings if they put some effort into it, and he didn’t think his heart could take it if he had seen his brother or sisters have to deal with that kind of pain until they could bear the weight of it with the kind of exhausted callousness that Drew was wearing as armour.

He dimly noticed Cougar supportively wrapping his hand around Joe’s wrist, and the sad look of recognition on Andy, Nicky, and Booker’s faces as they watched them.

“I’m sorry that happened to you.” Joe felt his eyes start to burn under the weight of the tears building up in them, and gently slipped his wrist free of Cougar’s hold with a twist of his hand before jerkily stepping away from him. “Sorry. I’m just going to get some air-”

Drew quickly twisted around the corner of the table in a nimble move that he couldn’t quite track in the state he was in, and Joe choked a little at the next piece of information that Drew gifted him with. 

She gave amazing hugs.

It was true that Drew seemed to be built out of ninety-five percent compact muscle and sharp edges, and that her scrubs seemed to be filled with the sharp scent of chemicals and blood, but the comfortable parts more than made up for it.

Drew’s neck smelled of spearmint and vanilla when he hid his face in it, and her clothing was all very soft to the touch despite the unpleasant smells clinging to it. Joe also suspected that her uniform would be a hell of a lot more comfortable to sleep in than the jeans he usually ended up trying to nap in. 

Joe shakily sighed as she kneaded at a spot half way up his back while he relaxed into her competent hold, and tried to make sure that he gave her just as good a hug as the one that she was giving him.

“Good job. Just keep holding on, Joe. I know that it’s a lot to get hit with at the same time.” He mutely nodded against her shoulder, and just barely restrained himself from squeezing too hard as she leaned to look over Joe’s shoulder.

“Booker, do you mind getting in on this? My back is fucking freezing. I’m a Mediterranean baby, I’m not built for this temperature.”

Booker had apparently been waiting for the invitation, because both Drew and Joe were wrapped up in Booker’s long arms within moments. Drew huffed in relief at her first contact with him, and Joe frowned as he watched her breath emerge in a cloud of faint white mist.

He hadn’t been feeling the cold in the room too badly, but Drew’s scrubs looked paper thin, and the long sleeved black shirt underneath didn’t look much thicker or cold hardier.

“Jesus, that’s better. Thanks, Booker, my arm and back aches like a motherfucker in the cold.” Joe tilted his head so that Drew could wiggle her head in closer, and quirked a worried eyebrow at Booker. “Of course it also does that in airplanes, thunderstorms and the sauna at the gym, so it’s not really a big change of pace from the usual.”

“We could have had you patch up Cougar somewhere warmer if we had known that being in here would bother you.” Joe rolled his head around enough to see that Nicky was looking at Drew with furrowed eyebrows as he and Andy draped their spare layers of clothing over Cougar in an attempt to keep him warm.

“Well, it’s not like we had a choice beyond the morgue, Nicky. You couldn’t have walked into the hospital covered in blood and combat gear, and it’s not like anybody but me could’ve afforded to pay out of pocket to get a bullet pulled out without health insurance.”

“It couldn’t possibly cost that much to have it fixed. Can it?”

“It usually averages out to one hundred thousand dollars a pop if everything goes off with a hitch, Nicky. The American healthcare system is a fucking nightmare, and I’m smack dab in the middle of it.”

Drew’s face twisted into an uncharacteristic scowl that was filled with scorn and loathing that seemed to be directed inward as she shook her head.

“I don’t think that I would’ve survived this long if I hadn’t been born into wealth before working in the military system.” Drew’s mouth suddenly quirked into a rueful smile as her pained expression slowly faded away. 

“It’s alright, though. I’ve been getting some help straightening out the paperwork so that I can transfer over to Doctors Without Borders after the wedding and honeymoon. It would play up to two of my skill sets, after all.”

“Can’t wear this to the wedding.” Cougar was muzzily talking at half of his usual speed as he soulfully stared upside down at the three of them. “Gotta find that invite. Gimme a minute, I’m just gonna-” 

Joe frowned as Cougar unsteadily lurched onto his unjuried side while groping at the edge of the table. He seriously doubted that Cougar could even provide the definition of an invitation right now, so it wasn’t like the sniper was going anywhere under his own steam-

Drew suddenly vanished from Joe and Booker’s embrace without so much as bumping into either of them, and appeared at Cougar’s side to heave him back into place on the table just before he almost face planted on the floor despite Nicky and Andy belatedly grabbing for him.

“It’s pretty impressive that you managed to lose it already, Alvarez, seeing how we haven’t even sent out the Save the Dates, yet.” Cougar made a sound like a particularly woebegotten kitten, and Joe tried not to smile too obviously as Cougar hid his face in Drew’s side with an audible whine. 

“Yeah, he’s going to be really high off his ass for a while. You’re going to have to keep a pretty close eye on him when he’s coming off of it. Actually, I might be able to print off some aftercare instructions if you give me like twenty minutes-”

The lights suddenly flickered in one of the hallways that they hadn’t entered through, and Joe wouldn’t have found it very worrisome if it wasn’t for the eerie scream that sharply rose up into a gratingly haunting roar that echoed through the building while the light blinked in and out.

The lights outside of their room plunged into darkness, and Joe would’ve been very proud of how quickly they fell into a defensive formation if Drew didn’t heave an lovingly exasperated sigh once the awful screaming finally died out.

“Take it easy, guys. That happens to be both the mating call of an average bull elk and the beautiful woman that I’ve inexplicably decided to spend the rest of my life with. Can’t remember why I decided to do that right now for the life of me, of course.”

“I love you too, babe!” Samara’s voice was just as bubbly as the last time that Joe had heard her, even if her English accent was much stronger than the faint suggestion that he remembered it being. “Sorry about scaring you guys, but I just couldn’t resist doing that in this costume.”

The lights snapped back on outside the room, and Joe squinted at the small window in the door as she moved behind it. The flash of a glossy white-blond ponytail wasn’t a surprise, but the brief glimpse of what might’ve been dark horns or antlers was definitely one.

“I’m coming in with the stuff for Carlos, so I’d appreciate it if you guys tried to resist the urge to shoot me.” The aristocratic tilt of her accent was a bizarre contrast for her casually slapped together words, and Joe was pleased that Nicky and Andy refrained themselves to just hovering their hands over their most conveniently placed guns as Samara ducked through the door.

Well, she looked drastically different from when he had last seen her in Las Vegas. Samara’s soft oversized sweater and yoga pants had been swapped out for a sharply tailored oxblood coloured suit and black dress shoes, along with a gigantic set of bloodied antlers that were sprouting from the top of her head.

“We missed you two so much!” Joe was too absorbed with eying up the fake blood dribbling over her chin and neck to pay much attention to her excited greeting as she handed her backpack off to Drew. “Mind you, I wish nobody had to get shot just so we could see you two again, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“We’re happy to see you too, Samara.” Booker’s warmly affectionate tone took a sideways step into the cheerfully antagonistic one that frequently came out whenever he engaged with his home country’s immortal enemy. “You know, even if you had the terrible misfortune to be born in England.”

Samara sniped right back at him in a playfully caustic blur of flawless French, and Joe wasn’t the only person muffling a snicker as Booker was stunned into silence for a few moments before he waded into the verbal battle once again.

The French that they were firing back and forth at each other sped up to the point that Joe couldn’t decipher it beyond a few phrases, so he wasn’t entirely sure what the mention of boarding school, stolen cars and arrest records were in reference to. Drew’s meaningful cough eventually got the two of them to pause their conversation as they glanced over at her with wide eyes.

“Baby, were you wearing the antlers when you were handing out candy to the trick or treaters with Quire?” 

“What? No, Quire dressed up as Morticia from the Adams family and I went as Gomez to match. I promise that no tiny children were traumatized at her house in the process.”

“Did you just draw on a pencil mustache and call it a day on your Gomez costume, Huxley?”

“You’ll never be able to prove it if I did, Al-Kaysani.”

Drew and Samara softly smiled at each other with the kind of intimate warmth that Joe recognized as one of the side effects of loving somebody else without any strings or judgement attached to it. 

“Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham?” Cougar’s perplexing question had considerably less slur to it than the last time that he had spoken, and Joe went to help with Nicky and Andy’s efforts in giving Cougar a hand with pulling on his new clothes. “Are the two of you dressed up like them for Halloween?” 

Joe dropped to his knees to help pull the velvety wool socks that Samara had brought over Cougar’s feet, and tried not to think about the confrontation that was going to go down once Cougar was sober enough to remember Joe getting shot in the head directly in front of him.

“Perfect guess, Carlos. Really, all Drew has to do for her costume is look exhausted and vaguely homicidal, mess up her curls a little and try to act like she’ll go along with my every evil desire.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure that’s just a description of my day to day look, darling.” Drew cheerfully smirked at the playfully scolding look Samara shot at her before she started cleaning up the debris from fixing Cougar’s leg. “You texted me something about keys?”

“Shit, I totally forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder, Drew.”

Samara immediately dove into one of her suit’s inner pockets in an apparent hunt for the keys that they had been talking about, and Joe cocked his head with a frown as he looked at the strange sheen of the inner fabric of her suit.

He didn’t have many occasions to wear a suit of his own, but he didn’t remember even the heaviest of wool suits swinging with that much weight to it.

Samara successfully found whatever she was looking for with a triumphant little noise, and pulled out the key ring to their abandoned vehicle before holding it out to Andy.

“You accidently left your Suburban running in the parking lot, so I took the liberty of parking and locking it on the way by, …?”

“Andy. This is Nicky. Joe and Booker’s significant other.” There was an elevaluating gleam in Andy’s ice blue eyes as she patiently helped Cougar pull on his new wool and leather jacket while frostily eyeing Samara with a sharp glance.

Joe would’ve dismissed the somewhat standoffish introduction as Andy’s way of seeing how Drew and Samara would react to the news of their relationship with each other, if Andy didn’t seem to be looking at Samara’s clothing instead of her reaction to the news. 

“Thank you for moving the truck, and taking the time to buy some clothing for Cougar. It’s a very thoughtful gift. Do you want any money towards it?”

“Oh, no, it’s totally fine. If I was ever in the same situation, I’d want somebody to come along and give me some clothes and clean socks. It’s not even that fancy a present, it’s really more like some small necessities than anything else.” There was a delighted smile creeping across Samara’s face as she attempted to play down Andy’s thanks while her rising blush betrayed her true feelings about it. “It really isn’t that-”

“Well, it’s still a better gift than the nasty notes great-aunt Anna used to send us with those scented candles of hers.” 

The line of Drew’s shoulders were sagging as she sorted the medical waste into the appropriate trash containers, and Joe could just about see the way Booker was calculating just how close he could get to her without accidentally getting jabbed with anything sharp.

“She thought it was a fun little passive-aggressive present after I lost my sense of smell. Thankfully, she stopped sending them about eight years ago. They were always giving Samara headaches whenever she smelled them.” Drew listlessly shrugged under the weight of the old insult that was obviously still heavily weighing on her. “Sorry about interrupting you, Samara.”

“It’s fine, love. I just wanted to congratulate them on finding such lovely people to be in a relationship with.” 

Joe was sure that her compliment towards the three of them was heartfelt and sincere, but it was the contrasting expression in her big blue eyes that was currently his biggest worry and concern.

All consuming wrath. Samara’s carefully hidden expression was that of the very fuel that sparked wars, and the crazed howling of people in a berserker rage as they dealt out death to those surrounding them.

Joe had personally witnessed that look plenty of times, but he would’ve never guessed that it would look so at home on Samara’s ethereal face.

Andy made a small satisfied noise next to him, and he was pretty sure that even Nicky and Booker got a quick look at Samara’s expression before it got forcefully morphed into a more appropriate shade of protectiveness over Drew.

“Thanks, Samara.” Nicky looked a little too wary to entirely look away from her, so he had to twist his neck a little awkwardly as he talked to Drew without moving his eyes away from Samara. “You said that you wanted to print off some aftercare instructions for Cougar’s bullet wound?”

“Yeah, I should probably do that now. I might even be able to beat the printer in the lobby into submission if I get started on it soon.”

“You should take Nicky with you. He's a miracle worker with contrary printers.”

Nicky made the quietest snarl that Joe had ever heard him produce in all their years together, and he privately resolved to get the story behind it from Andy as Nicky silently followed Drew out of the morgue.

Andy turned her basilisk stare to Samara as soon as the door swung shut behind them.

Samara bitterly shook her head as she started talking about the apparent cause behind her sudden case of bloodlust.

“Those stupid candles never gave me a headache, and Drew’s aunt never stopped sending them.” Samara’s lips were peeling upwards as she venomously snarled out the words, and Joe kept a cautious eye on the way that her wrathful expression started creeping back as her accent quickly thickened with rage. 

“I will not put up with anybody who will tell the love of my life that anybody who happens to be disabled or a part of the LGBTQ community is sub-human and a waste of oxygen.”

Samara’s teeth were fully bared as she unseeingly glared at a spot just towards the right of Andy’s head, and Joe couldn’t help but notice that her white knuckled grip on the counter was starting to vibrate slightly.

“I would strangle God himself if it allowed Drew to keep making her little jokes about herself, but absolutely nobody else on this planet gets to take pot shots at her about it.”

“But this country’s fucking mailing system will keep delivering that sack of shit’s horrible little packages, so I’ve been forced to accumulate a two hundred pound box of them in the attic over the last decade so that Drew never finds out about them.”

“So yes, I’m fucking furious about it, and I don’t give a flying fuck about anybody who tries to tell me not to be.” Samara suddenly lifted her head to meet all of their gazes with the fiery glare of somebody who had been on a week long murder rampage with no intentions of stopping if something got in her way. 

“With all of that being said, I’d deeply appreciate it if the four of you didn’t mention that particular secret to Drew. Don’t make me try to buy your silence with something that’s called Winter Morning Covered With Sugar Snow.”

Booker summoned the nerve to speak first, which Joe mostly put down to the bravery caused by his relatively youthful age, and the simple fact that he was obviously Samara’s clear favourite out of all of them. 

Joe thought it was an excessively dangerous question to ask when Samara still looked like she might reenact the faithful eruption over Pompeii.

“What does that one smell like?”

“Mostly vanilla bean.” With that, Samara bounced back to her usual state of cheerfulness, which just seemed unnervingly worrisome after the way she had just viciously gone off.

“What exactly do you do for a career?” Andy looked like she might’ve also been mentally calculating Samara’s size for a full set of plate armour and a blunt weapon, but they hadn’t survived this long in secret without throwing around some extra caution around possible threats.

“Samara’s in the fashion industry. She makes things like that suit that she’s wearing. Little accessories. Things like that.” Cougar’s eyes were finally clearing a little as he settled his unscathed hat back on his head while he steadily worked his way through his firmly decisive words. “She’s had a worldwide demand for her work for as long as I’ve known her.”

“Well, that’s definitely true. How’s that last accessory I sold you working out?”

“It’s still in perfect shape.” He briskly jerked his head in the direction of the door that Drew and Nicky had disappeared through minutes before. “Incoming.”

Joe could clearly sense that none of them were particularly satisfied with Cougar’s less than detailed explanation, but there wasn’t exactly a polite way of pushing for more information as Nicky and Drew pushed their way back into the chilly room with an alarmingly thick stack of paperwork.

“Well, this should cover everything that you guys will need to know about dealing with Cougar’s leg. It mostly boils down to not letting it get infected or anything worse than that.” 

Drew gracefully handed off the five inch tall stack of papers into Booker’s waiting arms before she shot a hopeful look at Andy and Joe.

“Nicky said that you guys might be able to drop me off at a friend’s house on your way by? I’d drive there myself, but I’ve been up for close to twenty hours by now, and Aello will merrily bite my head off if she even gets a hint that I tried to drive distracted. Damn younger sisters.”

“Well, she’s touring in Sweden at the moment, she might not notice-” Samara grinned as she shook her head at the dry smile suddenly gracing Drew’s face. “You’re right, she would know anyway. I can always drive you to Quire’s place instead of going to the bar’s costume contest if you want me to.”

“No, you’ve got to go and bring back whatever they’ve managed to come up with for a first place prize this year, baby.”

“It’s fifty dollars, a basket of chicken wings and fries, and this is just a rumour, so don’t get your hopes up, but apparently there might also be a golden ball ga-”

Samara had apparently just remembered that there were other people in the room, and hastily changed whatever she was about to say mid-sentence.

“Golden ball toy for dogs. Just dogs, which we don’t even own, so the cats are just going to have to cope with it.”

“Very smooth word play there, Huxley.” Joe promptly took the liberty of hunting down Drew’s familiar wool coat while Drew pulled Samara close for a long, lingering kiss before she pulled away with a low murmur that clearly nobody else was supposed to hear. “Maybe you can try that golden ball toy out on me if everything goes well, Daddy.”

“Now I’ve definitely got to go win that damn thing. Have fun with Quire, though you might have to keep her away from watching that underwater horror movie with whatsherface that she’s been talking about wanting to watch, because we both know that never ends well.” 

“She said that she found a hot sauce that will melt my eyeball out of my skull the last time that I talked to her, so that should be entertaining enough for everybody involved. Love you. Be safe.” 

Drew firmly dropped another kiss on Samara’s mouth before tucking her shoulder under Cougar’s nearest armpit as she hoisted him to his feet, and started half-carrying him toward the exit with an almost alarming turn of speed.

“Well, you guys better go before she gets too impatient. Take care of yourself, Joe.” He obligingly ducked his head down so that Samara could reach his cheek for a quick kiss, and returned the tight hug that she tacked at the end of the kiss. 

“Nicky, Andy, it’s been lovely meeting you two. Hope everything goes well for all of you.” Joe got one more quick squeeze into the hug before she pulled away to give Booker a playfully scrutinizing look.

“I love you, Booker, but you’ve got almost a foot of height on me. That means that you’re not getting a kiss from me unless you’ve got a milk crate hiding somewhere.”

All three of them cracked matching grins as they watched Booker take the challenge for what it was and snatch a gleefully giggling Samara off her feet in a massive bear hug so that they could exchange kisses on each other's cheeks.

A deliberate looking scrape of Booker’s stubbly cheek against Samara’s neck made her giddily shriek with laughter as he spun her around, and Joe couldn’t help but laugh out loud as she lightly swatted at Booker’s shoulder in a playful reprimand.

“Oh my God, put me down! I swear that your face is made out of actual sandpaper, and I can’t drive if I’m still dizzy.” Samara still planted a friendly kiss on his mouth despite her previous complaints about his scratchy face as he gently set her back down onto her feet. “You better keep up with texting me, Booker. I barely got through three weeks of not hearing from either of you two, and I don’t want to do it again.”

“Of course, Samara. Do you want us to walk you to your car before we leave?” Booker was affectionately beaming down at her as he spoke, and Joe felt a deep sense of relief at how happy the younger man was after spending a brief time with Samara. 

“No, it’s alright. I’ll just make sure that everything is locked up before I head out. Hopefully we’ll see each other again soon without anybody being shot first.”

With that, they gathered their errant pieces of gear that had gone astray in the fuss over Cougar’s leg, and trooped out to the parking lot just to find that their Suburban was already running while Drew and Cougar curled up to each other in the back seat. 

Joe grinned as he saw the unmistakable resemblance between the two of them and a den of sleepy raccoons as he pulled the door open while he tried to figure out how they were all going to fit in the limited seating as Booker circled around the other side.

“It’s fine, Joe. I’m just going-” Drew’s jaw audibly cracked around the force of her sudden yawn as she squirmed away from him. “-To sit on the floor or something. The drive to my friend’s house isn’t that far.”

“Just give Nicky the address, and you can sit in my lap until we get there.” Booker looked like he could do with a fairly extensive nap of his own, and Joe arched an eyebrow in his direction for the sudden offer as Drew started wiggling across the seat towards him. “It’s just for purely practical seating reasons, Joe. Did you ever get a better sheath for your knife, Drew?”

“I’ll do my best to make sure that you won’t accidentally get poked with it.” Drew settled into Booker’s lap with a heavy sigh, and Joe reached out to rest his hand on her ankle as she dropped her head against Booker’s chest. “I just got told via text that you’ve been giving stubble burns to Samara. Is getting me curled up in your lap all part of your devious seduction plan for the two of us, Booker?”

Joe could barely see the way that Booker was blushing in the dark as he sputtered out a protest, but he clearly spotted Drew’s sly wink at him as Cougar jiggled against his other side in near silent laughter.

He passed Drew’s neatly written directions up to Nicky as he slipped into the driver’s seat, and then all Joe had to do was sit back and listen to Drew sleepily chat with everybody as Nicky wove his way through the still busy suburban streets.

“Her house is the one with the dark purple roof and the twelve foot tall skeletons coming out of the front lawn, Nicky.”

Nicky nodded with a brisk dip of his chin, and immediately started angling for a parking spot against the curb as costumed teenagers nonchalantly ducked out of their path. 

“Thank you, Nicky. Now, Cougar, I have a few extra directions about your leg before I take off.” Cougar turned his face towards Drew with a barely audible hum.

“Keep it spotless, and glorify it. Take extra-special care of every little bitty bit of it as if I were watching over you like a hawk with a horse-whip in its talons, because I am. Should I discover a lapse of any variety during my absence, I promise swift and merciless justice will descend upon you.”

The oddly familiar words kicked Joe’s memory into sudden gear, and laughter burst out of him before he could think of trying to hold it back.

“Did you just quote Monsieur Gustave from the Grand Budapest Hotel, Drew?”

“Of course I did. Who do you think I dressed up as for last Halloween?” Joe leaned over so that Drew didn’t have to stretch so far in order to drop a kiss in the general vicinity of one of his eyebrows, and got one more gentle squeeze in at her ankle as she slipped away from him.

“Still, all of you should try and take those instructions to heart. Try to take good care of yourselves.”

Drew dropped a kiss on the bridge of Booker’s nose instead of any scruffier areas, and Joe wiggled his fingers in a small wave as she twisted around to open her door before disappearing through it in a graceful backwards somersault.

“You should know that your lap is an amazingly comfortable seat, Booker. See you guys around!”

Drew stuck around just long enough to hear the flustered noises coming out of Booker, and waved to them before starting her jog towards the tidy two story house behind her as they silently watched to make sure that she got safely indoors.

“Well, she’s definitely your cousin, Joe.”

Andy’s amused voice was soft and warm in the darkness, and Joe smiled as both Booker and Nicky hummed in agreement with Andy’s assessment of Drew.

He fully expected that everything was finally done and wrapped up in a neat bow after the eventful day, but Booker’s phone still chimed with a text message from Samara exactly thirty minutes after they had dropped off Drew.

“Samara said that we should check our trunk.” Joe joined Booker in instantly twisting around to squint at the lightless space behind their seats. Joe wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be looking for until he spotted the new additions a moment later.

“Fuck! Nicky, pull over now!”

Nicky brought the Suburban to a screeching halt on the side of the road within seconds of Joe’s shout, and he rolled out of his door with his heart hammering in his chest.

He really hoped that the four bulging black duffel bags sitting in their trunk weren't filled with enough car bombs to vaporise them all as he ripped open the trunk, but there was a strong possibility of it happening after the day they had just gone through.

The mysterious matching bags were stacked next to each other in a neat row on top of their existing gear, and the only thing that kept Joe from instinctively hurling them into the roadside ditch was the gray and black business cards clipped to each of their zippers like gift tags. 

Booker squinted as he pulled one of them close enough to look at the discreet card before he started to read it out loud to the tense group.

“S. Jonathan Huxley, Vice President of Huxley & Addair Armoury and Defense.” Joe helplessly shrugged at Booker’s bewildered head shake. “Where the hell have we heard of that company before?”

“Beats me. Let me see if anything in these bags are going to blow up in our faces.” Andy nimbly ducked between them before anybody could protest, and roughly yanked open the first bag that she got her hands on. 

She blankly stared at its contents for a long shocked moment, but she eventually crumpled with a howl of disbelieving laughter once it fully registered with all of them of what exactly the bag was topped off with.

The first was almost overflowing with American cash in various denominations with enough new socks tossed in to apparently keep all of their feet warm and dry for weeks. The second bag only contained ammunition and bullets, but there was still enough of it to over take a fairly small country.

The third was topped off with knives and guns of almost every size and shape possible. The fourth bag followed the established theme by only having the kind of thin, extremely high quality body armour that Joe only recognized by remembering a news article that he had read about the latest technology in that research field.

It was apparently a horrifically expensive gift to them all, with only one possible person that had unattended access to the Suburban when none of them were around. It took a try or two to clear his suddenly dry throat, but Joe eventually managed to sternly call out to where Cougar was still stiffly curled up in the backseat.

“What does Samara actually do for a living, and while we’re at it, where exactly did you train under Drew?”

Cougar visibly winced as he retreated further under the brim of his hat.

“I might’ve stretched the truth about a few things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Drew and Samara really do text like the wind. Samara also goes way harder at the costume contests than she really has to, but Drew secretly loves it. (She also loves the idea of getting a golden ball gag from it.) 
> 
> Thank you all so much for your lovely comments, and please comment if you liked it, because the warm fuzzies I get from them keeps from me from freezing my ass off up here. :)
> 
> The next chapter will be from Nile's POV.


	8. What Did You Do?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nile makes her final decision, and it's a terrible one. Karaoke is also involved, and mortifying childhood memories.

It was so cold in there.

Nile shivered her way through the vision that she was living though in her dream, and she strongly suspected that she was viewing it through Andy’s eyes, since she was the only one that she couldn’t see.

Metal. The room seemed to be built out of only that building material, and the sharp stink of chemicals and blood were the only things that she could smell.

Andy was filled with sympathetic pain as she watched Booker and Joe embrace a slim figure that was wearing dark green scrubs between the two of them. The person shifted into the light enough for Nile to see their face, and her breath caught in her throat for a moment at the view.

They had dark hair, eyes, and skin, and Nile thought that they might’ve been one of the prettiest people that she had ever seen. 

They were easily ranked right up there with her fellow immortals, and their sharp bone structure and lush lips forcibly reminded her of the times that she had been expertly hit on by almost unnaturally attractive people of all genders over her early adulthood and military career.

The realization that she was still capable of being attracted to anybody despite the shit show her life was turning into was a sudden slap in the face. Her last memorable orgasm had been caused by Booker and his magical fucking fingers weeks ago, and being terrorized by her new evil overlord while she was surrounded by what counted as her older male relatives didn’t exactly inspire her to go chasing after another climax.

Nile was still reeling a little bit from her unexpected train of thought when Andy’s eyes flickered away from the three of them and over a sign printed across the top of a door that proudly proclaimed it as the Los Angeles General Hospital Morgue.  
Fuck. Apparently both of their groups were now in the same city for the first time since Miami. 

Andy’s eyes moved again, and- Holy fucking shit, that was about a million percent more naked Cougar than Nile had ever wanted or needed to see. 

She woke from her vision with an abrupt jerk into wakefulness, and Nile gasped for air as she stared up at the still unfamiliar sight of the van ceiling.

The decision had been almost instantaneously made that they had to ditch their old van before they left Texas in case Aisha had left any insidious tracking devices or bombs in it. Nile was pretty sure that Aisha could've figured out how to order a direct missile strike to wipe them from the face of the Earth if she had really wanted to but nobody had been interested in Nile’s admittedly feeble argument to think over their hastily slapped together plans.

Aisha probably didn’t want to kill them, and storming Max’s compound tomorrow wasn’t going to do anything but put nearly all of Nile’s loved ones in Max’s warpath. Nile had less than a day to finally make her decision in regards to Max’s...she still refused to think of it as a job offer. It was more like deciding if only she had to wear the slave collar, or whether she wanted to kill off the entirety of her family and enslave her hopefully-one-day lovers and Andy.

So yes, Nile had the world weighing on her mind, and being immersed in a puppy pile of unwashed and snoring dudes in the back of a van wasn’t helping her thought process in the slightest. She wasn’t sure how Clay hadn’t been successfully strangled to death in his sleep by any of his bed partners or the entirety of the CIA and American military by now, since he currently sounded like he was running a broken chainsaw almost directly into her eardrum.

His snoring ratcheted upwards again, and she allowed herself a tiny fist pump of victory as Jake reached over her to lazily slap at Clay’s head without making any apparent signs of waking up. At least he couldn’t get arrested for assaulting a superior officer anymore. Clay grunted in annoyance, and Nile carefully started rolling herself towards Jake’s welcoming arms in an attempt to escape any of Clay’s possible retaliation as she squinted an eye open to evaluate what kind of position Jake had managed to squirm his way into in his sleep.

He could’ve easily been the envy of hopelessly twisted up house cats and yoga enthusiasts the world over.

Nile tried and failed to fall asleep again for an hour or so.

Christ, she missed her family and their absurdly endearing sleep habits and patterns. There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about Andy while she was sleeping, except for the horrifying way that she breathed so lightly while also sleeping like an unmoving brick that all of them unconsciously set themselves up on shifts so that they could subtly check to make sure that she was still alive and breathing. 

Nile really thought that Nicky’s pragmatism and long years of practice really came out when he had wryly shown her the pocket sized mirror that he kept on hand for the sole purpose of shoving it under Andy’s nose so that he could see her breath fogging the surface. She had gently turned down his generous offer to buy Nile her own mirror for a similar purpose.

Nicky happened to be an extremely light sleeper on top of being an overgrown Italian kraken that would ruthlessly drag in the nearest unmoving person for some of the most intense cuddling that Nile had ever been subjected to. She had spent some very long nights underneath him before their new relationship had started developing, which had mostly involved shamefully staring into the distance as she tried not to think of how nice Nicky felt plastered against herself. 

The same feeling of extreme closeness being a little too good for comfort had also applied to Joe and Booker, but Joe had an extra card up his pyjama sleeve that had also made it hilarious to even sleep in the same room as him when they weren’t in an active warzone. Nobody had apparently informed Joe about it since before his first death, but the man was the single biggest chatterbox in his sleep that Nile had ever heard. It usually only happened when he was fully relaxed, but there was almost no stopping him once Joe got going on the many things that he wanted to talk about in his sleep.

Nile had personally witnessed him going through one sided nonsensical arguments, mumbled terms of endearment, and surprisingly intense haggling with everybody else over nearly everything under the sun. Nile alone had once won Joe’s favourite shirt and a promise to share Nicky’s hand in marriage with her in exchange for one of the kitchen’s plastic spatulas and the one overly ripe banana that none of them particularly wanted to eat.

“This mawwiage is twuely a dweam filled with womance, Nile. I’m so glad that Joe signed me up to be one of your Bwother-Husbands without asking me about it fiwst.”

Nicky’s dryly spot on imitation of the priest from The Princess Bride had promptly sent Nile into a choking fit of startled laughter, and their affectionate spot of fun at Joe’s expense had quickly ended once Joe had awakened with a startled snort of his own.

Nile’s favourite moment of him talking in his sleep had been when Joe had serenaded them all with a deeply heartfelt rendition of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’ Even the way that Booker had puffed up like a mortified housecat on Joe’s behalf couldn’t stop everybody from being a little touched at the warmth that Joe had managed to pack into every word of the ear worm.

Booker slept silently, and he managed to do it with the deeply resigned attitude of a man who gloomily suspected that less than playful threats of suffocation were never too far behind him if he accidentally made an irritating racket in his sleep. It didn’t stop him from occasionally falling asleep with his eyes open, or the extremely rare occasions when he managed to fall asleep while still standing upright like a particularly scruffy blond horse.

“Are you awake, Nile?”

Nile shook her way out of her nostalgic day dreams at Jake’s quiet whisper, and quickly glanced over to find that he was fumbling around in an attempt to fish his glasses out of their case and onto his face.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“I’m going for a quick snack run. I just can’t take the snoring anymore, and I thought that you’d also want to get out of here.”

“Jake, it’s like-” Nile squinted at the distantly glowing surface of Pooch’s wristwatch, and shook her head at the time that it was displaying. “-Almost one in the morning. Nothing good is going to still be open, and Clay’s been saying that he wants to get everything going by late evening today. I don’t even know if there’s a single vending machine within walking distance of here.”

“It’s Los Angeles on Halloween night, Nile. It’s going to be fine, and everything is going to go perfectly.” Jake had a spark of mischief in his eyes as he leaned over her, and Nile despairingly shook her head in resignation. “Come on, I’ll even buy you a beer and a full size chocolate bar of your choosing if you come with.”

“You do remember that you offered Tony the exact same thing as payment before he jumped off the roof to test your sketchy ass homemade jet pack, right?”

“He signed the consent forms, Nile, and I still ended up giving him TWO chocolate bars and a non-alcoholic beer for his trouble.”

“Yeah, you did. You know, right after he broke his femur and hip in two places from crashing into the driveway. I really thought that Jess and Mom were going to skin you alive when they got back home from their grocery trip and found out what you had done.”

“Hey, we all learned lessons that day. Tony learned how to bounce better once he got out of the casts, and I found out that you and Tony are goddamn rocks under intense interrogation.”

“Mama didn’t raise no rats, Jake.”

He brightly grinned at her, and Nile was sure that Jake would’ve continued pleading his case if Roque hadn’t rolled over at that very moment with a noise like a hibernating grizzly bear being shot at with fireworks.

“Stop running your mouths about your childhoods, and go eat some fucking cheeseburgers.” Jake protestingly opened his mouth, and Nile quietly yelped as Roque quickly threw their jackets, shoes, and wallets at them with an exasperated growl. “No, Jensen, it doesn’t have to be burgers. Get out, or I’m going to see if Clay’s snoring can be weaponized.” 

Nile took the less than dire warning for what it was, and followed Jake’s lead in hastily crawling out of the van until they emerged from the stinky den of sweaty feet and armpits into the slightly fresher air of downtown Los Angeles. 

“Hhhggh, that’s better.” Jake shook himself with an exaggerated shudder as he widely grinned at her. “I was starting to wonder if the smell and noise was going to permanently do me in before the sun came back up, even if you probably would’ve been fine.”

Jake had been hurling himself into his comfortable pit of humour about Nile’s immortality since they had their joint emotional breakdown on top of the hotel roof in Texas, and Nile just didn’t have the heart to deprive him of his preferred coping method when things were getting so close to being totally fucked up beyond repair.

“Do you want to look up somewhere that we can go to on your phone?” Nile pulled her jacket around herself with a shiver as she jerked her chin at the bulge of Jake’s ever present cell phone, which was safely tucked away in one of his jean pockets. 

Jake’s sandy blond hair barely wiggled in the hold of his stale hair products as he shook his head without looking up from where he had a foot braced on the van’s back bumper so that he could tie his shoelaces.

“Nope. We’re going to do this the old fashioned way.” Jake looked up with a sunny grin, and Nile tried not to show the way that her heart was cracking under the weight of her upcoming losses. “We’re going to walk around until we smell food, and then we’re going to find the place that seems to be having the most fun.”

“That’s going to be a bit of a tall order this late on Halloween, Jake.”

\--

“Oh, that’s definitely the place. I mean, just look at it.”

Nile was looking at it, and she still didn’t know how she felt about the brightly lit bar that was still crowded with party goers. The neighborhood was nice, and the air was filled with the smell of food that was enticingly tempting for any weak willed dieters for a six block radius, which were all things that were very important to their current needs. She nervously glanced up again at the charmingly designed sign hanging above the door, which was proudly declaring the name of the bar.

“What do you think ‘The Duck And Clover’ is supposed to stand for?”

“Maybe it’s a cutesy Irish pub sort of thing?” Jake was almost jiggling with anticipation, and Nile felt her eyes widen as the patrons of the bar started roaring in time with the singer’s crooning voice. There. That was her main source of anxiety. Marine, immortal, badass, and generally nice person who almost had a fucking spectacular sexual and all around relationship with three fantastic guys.

Also deeply terrified of Karaoke bars and all the things that they entailed.

“-Feeling all alone without a friend, you know you feel like dying. Oh, didn’t I, didn’t I, didn’t I see you crying?”

Yes, the singer was enthusiastically working the hell out of the song, but Nile was still taken aback by how much the lyrics to ‘I Want You To Want Me’ was matching up with how she had been feeling ever since the first time that she had heard Max’s voice in her ear.

The singer smoothly swung into another verse with the bar’s screaming approval, and Jake gently bumped his hip against her waist as Nile indecisively hovered between staying and eating the cheeseburger that she now had her heart firmly set on, and asking Jake to try and find a different bar.

“Nobody’s going to make you get up there and sing if you don’t want to, Nile.” 

“Promise?”

“Absolutely. After all, I think everybody is still trying to recover from the mental scars that you caused by trying to sing at your ninth grade talent show.”

Jake was already dancing away from her with a cheerful shriek of laughter as he slipped backwards through the door of the bar, and Nile settled for vengefully digging her fingers into the horrendously ticklish spot just below his ribs as they ducked inside the wave of sound that was pushing outwards.

Almost every person inside the bar was wearing a costume that showed various degrees of detail and expense, but the blond singer giddily shaking her ass and everything else as she sang along took the cake in that particular category.

Nile was sure that the almost burgundy tailored suit and bloodied rack of antlers emerging from the singer’s scalp must’ve been the foundation of her costume, but she had her doubts about the clearly cheap plastic tiara dangling from one of her horns and the obviously fake severed human arm that she was using as a stage prop as she barrelled towards the end of the song. Nile curiously squinted at the golden object wrapped around the woman’s neck as it dimly reflected the neon stage lights.

What was that thing? It kinda looked like a really oversized and vaguely ugly necklace, but what kind of necklace needed a black velcro strap-

Nile’s cheeks burned as she finally put together the pieces about the metallic ball gag that the woman was casually wearing like it was any other piece of jewelry. She only got more flustered at the thought that Jake had either entirely missed the woman’s unusual fashion accessory, or had chosen to happily ignore it as he watched the end of her performance with rapt attention.

She was breathlessly grinning and incandescent in the visible ecstasy that came with what Nile had to admit was a flawless performance, and Nile couldn’t begrudge Jake playfully yelling that he loved the singer along with most of the bar as she started to head off the small stage.

“And I love you, random citizens!” Nile choked a little at the two brazen kisses being blown at her and Jake, and she might’ve hastily recalculated just how stable her heterosexuality was as the leggy blond gave them a look that promised all of the fun that people could have with most of their clothing still on.

“We’re not citizens!”

That finally brought the blond to a stop as she glanced back at them, and Nile was surprised to find that she instinctively fell into a parade rest position next to Jake’s matching one as the woman’s eyes consideringly swept up and down them with a thoughtful look before she lifted the microphone back up to her mouth.

“Rah?”

Almost forgotten warmth blossomed through Nile at a complete stranger recognizing her as a Marine without exchanging more than a word about it, and she yelled back the expected response along with two dozen strangers as Jake proudly squeezed her shoulders with one of his arms.

“Oohrah!”

“I knew it.” The blond shook her head with a wide grin as she gracefully handed off the microphone to the next person waiting in line for it. “Another round of drinks on me!”

The blond disappeared into the yelling mob with a flip of her long hair, and Jake jiggled Nile’s shoulders in place with one more squeeze of his arm before quickly breaking a path through the crowded dance floor so that they could steal two of the free chairs still left at the bar.

“Ah, so you’re the two that decided to start a riot in my bar. You may as well get your drink and food orders in before everybody tries to collect on Samara’s offer.”

The dryly spoken suggestion came in the thickest Irish accent that Nile had ever heard, and she looked up to find a chaotic mop of black hair, blue eyes and a metric ton of freckles that all made up the stocky male bartender.

“I’d also appreciate it if you could try to spare my nerves and not order anything too weird for your opening drinks.” His eyes narrowed in thought for a moment before he firmly shook his head. “Or Long Island Iced Teas. Fucking things. I hate making them on busy nights.”

Nile felt Jake’s elbow bump against her own, and she glanced over to find that her older brother was wiggling in his seat with a calculating gleam in his eyes that had never once ended well with all of Nile’s experiences with it.

“Jake, don’t do it-”

“Two Alligator Sperms, please. Do you want anything besides that, Nile?”

“Literally anything else that doesn’t remind me of the reproductive system of overgrown reptiles. Like a beer. Almost any beer.”

“Mmhm.” The bartender slapped down a drink coaster in front of Nile, and then he delicately placed a frosty pint glass of pale beer down on it with far more care a minute or two later before he exasperatedly eyed up Jake’s toothy grin. “If you want Alligator Sperm, you better be willing to pull up a recipe on your phone, buddy.”

Jake had predictively pulled out his phone before the bartender could even request it, and Nile despairingly shook her head as they both bowed their heads over the screen of Jake’s phone. She had come to peace with the realization that every close relationship with her siblings automatically came with some soul crushing embarrassment, but it was just as well that Jake was never going to meet Booker, Nicky, and Joe.

She could barely live with herself right now even without the mortifying thought of Jake cheerfully telling them about the time that her braces had become hopelessly ensnared with Zack Mckowlski’s own set of dental hardware during her first real makeout session at the tender age of thirteen. Nile had barely managed to piteously cry out for Jake’s help with breaking the two of them loose from each other as she desperately tried and failed to avoid eye contact with her childhood crush.

It was true that Jake had mercifully refrained from making any comment that could’ve be interpreted as teasing as he painstakingly freed them from each other, but she had never been able to look at wire cutters, her braces, or Zack again without praying for spontaneous combustion to strike her down. Nile shuddered heavily at the not so distant memory. No, she really didn’t need the worldly, grown ass adult men who wanted to get into her pants to know about that traumatic incident. Time for a distraction.

“Why did you name the bar The Duck and Clover?”

“He actually tried to name it The Duck and Cover, but nobody could understand him through that Irish brogue. Isn’t that right, Kieran?”

Nile glanced to the side at the teasing British voice that was coming from behind her, and she tried not to stare too obviously as the blond singer lazily hoisted herself up onto the bar stool next to her while the smell of her woodsy peach perfume and cooling sweat reached Nile’s nose.

“You can go right ahead and plow that theory straight up your ass, English.” The bartender looked more affectionately amused than anything else as he looked up from Jake’s cocktail recipe just long enough to playfully flick the tip of the blond’s perky nose as she dramatically gasped at his words and pressed a hand to her chest.

“Are you finally going to bend me over and do me special then? Kieran, you should’ve told me sooner so that I could’ve broken things off with Drew.”

“I probably wouldn’t shag you even if I wanted to fuck anybody, Samara, so try to keep it in your pants. Do you want your prize money now?”

“Nah, just keep it as a tip.” She promptly swiveled on her seat a few seconds later to flash a sunny grin at Nile and Jake. “Do you two want-”

“I’m engaged!” Jake’s eyes were as wide as tea saucers, and Nile glanced back towards Samara as she gave him a dryly amused look.

“Good for you, but I’m engaged as well. I was just trying to ask if you two wanted-”

“I’m dating three guys right now.” Nile clapped a horrified hand over her mouth as soon as her spontaneous confession burst out of her, but Jake was already choking on his neon green cocktail from the sudden news.

“That’s fantastic, I hope you have great-”

“What the fuck did you just say, Nile?” Jake was staring at her like a particularly stunned fish while the bartender briskly shoved a towel at him, and Nile was seriously considering bolting until Samara wrapped a friendly arm around her shoulders as she watched Jake with the air of a jaguar lazily watching a particularly stupid mouse as it crawled over her foot.

“She just said that she’s dating multiple men. Are you going to deal with it and share the chicken wings and fries that I just won, or are you going to make a fucking issue about it?”

The arm wrapped around Nile’s shoulder was thickly wrapped with muscle, and Nile had no doubt that the rest of Samara was probably in the same shape as the air slowly filled with the possibility of imminent violence while the bartender carefully watched Jake.

“What? No, I’m just surprised about finding out about it.” The confused shock in Jake’s blue eyes was already getting replaced with apologetic horror as he slowly raised his hands to show that he didn’t have anything in them. “She’s my baby sister. I’d never hurt her. Shit, I’m sorry about reacting that way, Nile.”

“Atta boy. I’m still picking out the sauce for the chicken though.”

Samara’s grip on her slackened as Nile reached up to touch the back of her hand, and Samara easily fell back in the laconically friendly attitude that she had before Jake had accidently driven her hackles up. There were a few tense moments as they warily watched each other like scrapping alley cats before Samara softened her posture.

“I’m sorry about snapping at you. I just found out that an old coworker of mine had to go to the hospital, and there were a few guys harassing some college girls before the two of you got here.” Samara dug the heel of her hand into one of her eye sockets while she apologetically blinked at Jake with her other cornflower blue eye. “I don’t suppose that you’ll accept french fries as an apology gift?”

“I don’t know if there’s a better present than french fries for apologizing with, really.”

Samara gave them a paler ghost of the grin that she had been flashing earlier, and most of the tension melted away as the three of them idly chatted about a few things through their shared meal.

What were Samara’s antlers made out of? Hand whittled styrofoam with plenty of paint, sweat and tears. Where did Samara and Jake’s separate proposals happen? A very specific dune in Death Valley under the Milky Way for Samara, and at Coney Island when Jake was still a little dizzy from the rollercoasters. What did Nile want to learn about in college? Art, and no, Nile hadn’t heard about the full ride scholarship that Samara excitedly filled her in on despite the sinking feeling in her stomach.

Their snack run hadn’t exactly gone like Nile had thought it would, and a fair part of their walk back to the van was filled with silence until Jake finally spoke.

“Well, I’m pretty sure that Samara isn’t a run of the mill civilian.”

“Mmm. She’s spooky.” Nile cautiously glanced over to look at the outline of Jake’s face as he quietly hummed in agreement with her. “I would’ve eventually told you about the guys that I’m dating. It’s going better than my last couple of relationships.”

Nile didn’t think it would help any if she added in the part where she probably would’ve told Jake’s gravestone about it decades down the line.

“That’s good. I’m sorry about freaking out about it at the bar. I’m just thinking about what Cougar would’ve said if he saw my first reaction to your news.” Nile could barely see Jake’s nose crinkle in the dawning light as he demonstratively gestured with his hands. “You know, something along the lines of ‘Your sister is an adult who is fully capable of making her own decisions, so shut up and deal with it. You should also try to not to embarrass her in front of her boyfriends, because she never snitched about the stupid things that you did to me.’”

“That sounds about right. Except he would just condense it into saying your name and giving you a certain look.”

Jake heartily sighed again.

“Fuck, I miss him.”

\--

Nile might not have been able to currently control many things about her life at the moment, but there was one thing that she previously had complete control over until Clay came up with a very stupid idea two hours ago.

Nile hadn’t been, was currently, or potentially capable of being one very specific link in the group as they infiltrated Max’s eerily quiet compound. What was that one thing that Clay thought that she could instantly do at the drop of a hat?

Being a motherfucking sniper.

She sure as shit hadn’t been trained to do it in the Marines, and Nicky and Booker had opted for not forcing her to learn about it until she damn well wanted to. 

Well, there had been a few times when Booker, Nicky and Joe had gotten into a heated contest in front of her to see who could take down more mosquitoes by shooting rubber bands at them. The supposed training exercise now seemed a lot less like a creative idea to fine tune their aim, and more of a strutty, flirtatious competition to show off whoever had the prettiest plumage or biggest tail, or whatever peacocks thought was a particularly sexy body part. The comparison only got more accurate once Nile looked back on it with the knowledge that they were trying to get into her and each other’s pants.

Regardless, Nile knew a few things about snipers. They usually needed spotters, training, and a fuck load more information than Nile had been provided with, which had mostly boiled down to making sure that she only shot when she abolutely had to, and making sure that nobody put a bullet in Jake’s parkouring ass.

She wasn’t up to Cougar, Nicky, or Booker’s high standards, but she had still successfully prevented Jake’s cheerfully chattering body from being turned into a blood splatter against some walls by two guards. Nile didn’t feel great about having to take two lives even if she had managed to pull off the shots with Cougar’s second favourite rifle.

“How are you holding up, Nile?”

“I’m fine, Jake. Just hoping that we can wrap everything up soon.” Jake’s grunt of agreement almost blocked out the barely audible scraping noise that was coming behind her, and Nile had to squeeze her eyes shut for just a moment. As much as she wished that it was just Joe inadvertently sneaking up on her to see if she wanted to add something to the grocery list, it just couldn’t be him. Or anybody else that she really wanted to see. “We’re compromised. Bug out now!”

She took off her first attacker’s hand with a swipe of her khopesh before she got overwhelmed by the sheer number of guards cornering her on the rooftop, and Nile finally went down with a snarl as they jammed a syringe into her neck.

\--

Nile couldn’t see a single fucking thing as she lazily oozed her way back into consciousness while her skull throbbed with every useless blink of her eyes. Jesus, she getting sick and fucking tired of being dragged back and forth while apparently everybody and their mother took a turn at kidnapping her. At least Roque had considerately used actual handcuffs on her instead of the zipties that were painfully digging into her wrists and ankles, and the black bag that he had used certainly didn’t smell like feet.

“Man, this whole mission can go right ahead and eat a dick.”

“I’m so glad to hear that you’re back in the world of the living, Nile.” The tired rasp of Clay’s voice came from behind her as Roque let out a gravelly bark of laughter from where it felt like his back was pressed to her own. “Somebody else can go right ahead and sacrifice their dick to the cause if they really want to.”

“All of my dicks were made out of silicone. I’m just not sure if it would work the same even if I hunted down a strapon harness to go with it.”

Pooch was quietly hissing with laughter from her other side, and Nile’s heart beat harder in her chest at the realization that she hadn’t heard from Jake yet. Please God, don’t let him be dead. She kicked out with her legs to start rolling over regardless of whoever was pressed against her, and she instantly flinched as her boots collided with Jake’s back while he let out a pained groan.

“Fuck. That’s another vertebrae down the crap shoot.” Nile apologetically winced as Jake audibly rolled away from her boots. “Guys, we’ve got to get Nile out of here.” Jake’s voice was suddenly crisp and sharp in a way that it never was unless things were right on the knife edge between life and death. “Does anybody still have a knife on them?”

“What did you hear the guards say, Jake?”

There was a small, heart broken pause before her big brother managed to force the carefully selected words out.

“They said that you looked like you would be a fun time. They’re going to execute the rest of us out back afterwards.”

“Fuck.” It only took a second or two for Clay to rally from the rockslide of bad news that had been delivered through Jake’s simply put words. “Fuck their plans, and their fucking firing squad. Pooch, get the bag off of Nile’s head. Roque, gimme a hand ripping the garrotte out of the inside of my suit sleeve.”

“Left or right sleeve?”

“Right.”

The sounds of Clay and Roque exerting themselves with quietly hissed curses almost distracted Nile from the thick feeling of dread that was strangling her as Pooch went through the awkwardly painful maneuver of rolling over on top of her so that he could finish pulling the bag off her head with fumbling fingers.

Her first visual impression was that of the sprawling and nearly empty warehouse that they had apparently been abandoned in for the time being. There wasn’t anything that she could immediately see potential in as weapons for them. There also weren't any of the men that were undoubtedly in Max’s employ, either, so Nile took the small blessing for what it was- 

“Are you seriously trying to chew through my zip ties, Roque?”

“Yesh. Stoph mouving.”

Nile’s shoulders ached as she silently tried to lift her wrists into an easier angle for Roque as he industrially gnawed at the ribbed plastic that was biting into the skin of her wrists while everybody else did their best to get themselves sorted out.

The power and lights went out with the distinctive sound of dying electricity, and Nile was left in almost complete darkness. It wasn’t a huge improvement over the bag, and it didn’t feel like Roque was making great strides with the zip tie as it gouged scratches into her skin.

“Nile, what are we working with?”

“Big warehouse. Not a lot in it. The power just went out. They must not have a backup generator going yet.”

Nile’s night vision was creeping back a little at a time as she clumsily tugged Jake’s bag off his head with her teeth while her skin crawled at the thought of what was going to happen if they didn’t get out of here. She would eventually live again if the worst happened, but Booker’s own traumatic experience with the same thing was branded on him and nearly every move that he made. Her heart broke a little more at the thought of them finding out about it if it happened to her too.

“Yeah, the wifi just crapped out on my phone. Are you getting anything on your pho-”

The guards were back.

Jake whipped his head around to stare at the entrance as the armoured guards kept filing into the warehouse. A handful quickly turned into over two dozen while everybody tensed and Roque picked up the pace of his chewing. Jake’s hardening blue eyes flicked over to meet her own, and she knew that their ride or die commitment to keeping each other safe was about to come into play.

Of course, every single one of them had the tenaciousness and training to fight to the death if it came down to it.

“I love you, Nile. Don’t come back once you get loose.” The yelling guards were just a few steps out of grabbing range as Jake gently knocked his cheek against Nile’s knee without breaking the steely eye contact that they were sharing.

The first guard reached down to yank Jake off of her, and Jake promptly lost his fucking mind as he snapped his head up into the side of the man’s bare neck, and holy shit, he was actually tearing the guy’s throat out with his teeth in a spray of crimson blood.

Jake’s rabid attack apparently sparked off everybody else into their own vicious retaliations, and Nile only got a quick glance of the feverish eye gouging, strangling, and extremely creative maiming that they were doing before a hard kick from Roque broke Nile out of her stunned staring and sent her rolling across the concrete floor with a hiss.

Nile was certain that Andy could’ve come up with a more elegant or efficient method of getting some distance from the fight while she was stuck on her back besides feverishly scooching her way backwards with her scrabbling feet, but Nile was doing her best with what she had to work with.

“There you are, sweetheart. Come on, Max is going to want a word.” The stranger’s mild words were a severe contrast to the way that he was suddenly dragging her up off of the floor by her hair. His other hand was shoving its way into the back pocket of her jeans, and all Nile got when she followed Jake’s example by biting at any convenient vulnerable points was mouthfuls of foul tasting fabric and kevlar. “Really, biting? You’ve got to stop embarrassing yourself like this.”

A vicious backhand cracked into the side of her head and sent her reeling as he hauled her up over his shoulder, and Nile’s woozily snarled curses came from a dry mouth as her family was dragged kicking and biting past them while terror and rage surged upwards in her stomach and throat. Half of the people that she loved most in the world were about to get a bullet put through their skulls, and she had no doubt that Max wouldn’t object much to his employees putting her through a little more extra and personal torment.

The sounds of the nearly dead and weeping guards that Jake and his team had left behind drew Nile’s frantic attention back to where they had been pulled away from each other, and promptly felt her heart stop in her chest.

There were two people standing there that didn’t belong to either of their groups. 

They had long handled weapons casually hanging off their hips. They also had the right builds to be two of the people that she desperately wanted to see, and Nile almost called out to them as the marginally shorter person smoothly stooped down to slit the throats of the last stragglers that had been in their wake as Nile’s night vision came back a little more. 

Wait.

Nicky’s hips weren’t quite so wide as the shorter of the two, and Joe’s build was a bit stockier than the other person’s more svelte body shape.

Both of their heads swung up to look at her as a quiet gasp slipped out of her, and their faces were bristling with the top of the line night vision goggles that Nile had never really got to deal with in the Marines, along with their matching sets of streamlined body armour. None of her fellow immortals really dressed that heavily for any of their missions, and Nile almost yelled as they started soundlessly padding after her on soft soled leather boots in perfect, gliding strides that effortlessly matched each other.

Her exhale clicked to a stop in her throat as the taller of the two silently held their index finger in front of their hidden and masked mouth in the universal sign to be quiet. More carefully shaped hand signals quickly followed in the familiar language that had been drilled into Nile’s head since the start of her official Marine training.

Be quiet, which was repeated twice. Friendlies. Two more behind Nile. Extraction for everybody. There was another long sequence that ended with the taller person sliding out a long handled axe away from a loop on their hip as their partner pulled out a dark stained sledge hammer while they practically floated after Nile on the balls of their feet. Nile was supposed to roll off her captor’s shoulder in five, four, three, two-

Nile hurled herself to the side with all of her might as the guy scrabbled to hold onto her, and a part of her brain that wasn’t currently soaked in adrenaline distantly noticed the breeze that blew over the back of her neck as the blade of the axe whistled past her head before connecting with its intended target. Her capter’s body hit the ground with a hot spray of blood that caught Nile in the face, and his head wetly bounced off of a filing cabinet that was about twelve feet away from where the rest of his corpse was twitching on the floor.

A semi-hysterical urge to either scream, howl with laughter, or burst into tears struck Nile as she watched her blood soaked saviors viciously slaughter their way through the blindly fighting guards while they harmlessly sent Jake and everybody skidding up against the walls. 

Nile was pretty sure that she started doing all three of her panic fueled urges once she saw the gruesome injuries the shorter person was inflicting with their sledgehammer as they fought by their partner’s right side with the ease of years of practice. 

The horrific noise that the hammer made when it impacted with somebody’s skull and turned its contents into so much gritty pulp finally tipped Nile right over the physical edge from manically scream-sobbing, and she felt a vague twinge of shame as anything she that ate in the last few hours came up in an acidic rush of fluid.

She must have missed the exact moment when their other two team members joined the fight, but Nile was admittedly a little distracted with trying to roll over on her side so that she could stop choking to death on the mess that she had made out of herself. Gentle hands moved her onto her side before Nile even registered anybody standing over her, and she heavily shuddered as the uniformed person crouched over her with a wet rag and water bottle.

“Hey, it’s okay.” A voice modulator was distorting their words into metallic clicks, but Nile couldn’t help but lean into their gloved hands as they cleaned her up with soft touches of the rag. “I know that it’s awful, but we’re going to get you out of here. Do you want a sip of water before I pick you up?”

“Please.” The mouthful of lukewarm water was a soothing balm that flowed down her throat once she managed to rinse the taste of bile out of her mouth, and she even managed to summon up a shaky smile for them. “You can’t pick me up, I’m already dating some other people.”

“Well, they should’ve got a move on if they wanted to be the first people to be dragging you around in a bridal carry.” The sympathetic amusement for Nile’s admittedly pathetic joke came through all of the vocal distortion, and Nile tried her best to not look like the massive mess that she felt like as the person turned on their heels to look at the person with the axe. “Delta, are we cleared to move out?”

“Yes. Go ahead and get Freeman out. I’m just gonna-” The axe bearer’s own distorted voice broke into the same heated swear words that Cougar always used as they crouched down to pull Roque’s limp body over their shoulders before teetering upright with a grunt of effort. “Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve got to got to get more weight lifting in at the gym. Start lifting small bisons or something, that kinda shit.”

“I keep offering to spot you in the gym, Delta. We could always get a few more hours in there with just the two of us.” Nile hadn’t thought she could ever relax around the person with the sledgehammer after watching them tear the guards apart, but a nervous giggle burst out of her as they stuck an overly flirtatious pose at Delta as their hip jutted out.

“We’ve tried that before, Sierra.” Delta sternly shook their head even as they started striding to the exit under Roque’s considerable weight, and Nile squinted at them as they passed by Nile and the person who was patiently holding the water bottle up so that Nile could get another drink. Did Delta just wiggle their ass at Sierra? “You’re a terrible fucking spotter when you’re in excercise clothing, and I refuse to almost die again in mid-deadlift just because you can’t stop staring at my ass.”

“Show me any mere mortal that can resist peeking at your glorious ass or legs, and I’ll try to exert a little more self control the next time you get close to a barbell in yoga pants.”

Jake and Clay both made dryly rasping noises while they staggered past Nile under the carefully guiding supervision of the much taller fourth member of Delta’s team as they carried Pooch over their shoulder. Nile shot a confused glance at the only sane person left, who she still didn’t have a fucking code name for.

“You can call me Quebec until we’re out of here, and you don’t have to worry about those two or any sexual harassment in our work place.”

“They’re dating each other?”

“Understatement of the year, Freeman.” Nile gratefully clutched at the back of Quebec’s neck as they smoothly lifted her up without so much of a suggestion of wobbling, and sent a wary glance after the pair as Sierra helped adjust Roque’s weight across Delta’s shoulders. For all the blood soaked violence that they had just done, it still seemed like everybody but Sierra had gone through it with the attitude of having to go through a particularly unpleasant job. 

“Does Sierra actually enjoy killing people?”

Quebec’s sigh came out in a metallic rush of static while their strides quickened into a jog as they approached an already running black van, and Nile thought she could see a sad hint of resignation in the slight slumping of their shoulders. 

“It’s really hard to tell some days. They’re trying to be a better person despite it.” Quebec lightly hopped into the back of the van as Delta and Sierra helped Jake and everybody else onto the narrow benches that lined the sides, and Nile had to blink hard as they firmly cupped the back of her neck as she sat down next to Jake. She suspected that the small gesture would forever remind her of Andy and the endless affectionate squeezes of their necks that Andy absentmindedly dispersed whenever the opportunity arose.

Nile would just about give anything to see Andy or any of them again.

Quebec soundlessly gave her neck another quick squeeze before they hopped out of the back of the van with a small wave of their hand, and Nile tried to breathe through the panicked nausea and fear that was rising in her again. Yes, she had killed people before, but the last half hour that she had just gone through was probably going to be a pretty accurate preview of her life until Max dropped dead-

“Hey, Freeman, what do you dip pretzels in?” Sierra had finally tipped their night vision goggles back off of their head, and Nile finally got a look at their concerned blue eyes as they turned their head in her direction. ”Clay’s trying to convince me that the best way is to eat them plain, but I’m calling bullshit on that, since eating them in caramel sauce is clearly one of the best ways to go.”

“I...um.” Nile’s thoughts were still whirring too fast for her to easily take a run at the question that was obviously meant to take Nile’s mind off of the slaughterhouse that she had just gotten out of. Still, she tried her best. “I like them with mustard. Or hummus, sometimes.”

Joe could make a hummus that would make anybody fall in love with both him and it, and he had been the first person to introduce her to the pairing of that and pretzels. They had also absentmindedly murdered a tray of crudites and a bowl of his garlicky hummus in front of the tv as they recovered from convincing Nicky that canned mushrooms absolutely didn’t belong on the platter of raw vegetables.

“You should try them with tzatziki sauce if you’re into it with hummus.” Delta’s still altered voice broke into their conversation, and Nile glanced over to find that they were steadily patching up the various injuries that everybody but Nile had accumulated as they tiredly blinked at her. Their dark brown doe eyes were eerily similar to Joe’s, even if he hadn’t lived a mortal life long enough to fully develop the faint crow’s feet surrounding Delta’s. “Actually, I’ve got a joke that’ll work perfectly for that.”

“Babe, please tell me that you’re not talking about the one with the condiments.”

“Maybe.”

Sierra visibly winced at Delta’s elusive answer, and Nile’s shaking hands stilled a little as Jake dropped the side of his gigantic head onto her shoulder while Sierra and Delta bantered with each other.

“So, this guy was found dead in this vat of falafel condiments, right? Do you want to know what the police are treating it as?”

“Darling, I’m begging you not to finish that joke. We’re trying to make them feel better, and not traumatize them more-”

“What are they treating it as?” Nile tried to smile a little harder as Sierra dropped their face into their palms with a loud whine while Delta eagerly leaned towards Nile with the air of somebody that was about to drop a juicy bombshell of a punchline. 

“The police are treating it as a hummuscide.”

Sierra made a pained noise that sounded like they were slowly dying on the inside as Nile forced herself to return Delta’s playful wink. She didn’t want to hurt them, but Nile was quickly running out of both time and options, so her potential solutions were getting more painful by the minute.

\--

“Did you just bring us to Bruce Wayne’s mansion? Because I feel like there’s some real broody, having way too much money, and no parents left alive sort of vibe going on here.”

Nile was glad that Jake had swiftly voiced the group’s suspicions as they got bundled out of the van and onto the circular driveway that stretched out at the front of the admittedly massive house that they were all staring up at. The Victorian mansion was all Gothic points and sharp edges as it crept into the sky, and Nile quickly gave up on counting stories once they crept past four, and instead started pondering just how many turrets could be counted as overkill.

“Well, you might be right about your first two points, but I’m not sure if the last one still works when I only want my parents dead.” 

Nile couldn’t stop her small noise of alarm from slipping out while Sierra bent over to grab their booted toes with a long groan as Delta pulled out a house key and started jimmying with the lock.

“Relax, kid, I don’t really want them dead. Cursed with twenty years of incredibly bad luck, maybe, but not dead.” The front door soundlessly swung open under Delta’s hands. Nile couldn’t help but peek over Sierra’s shoulder as they breezily waved a hand towards the open doorway as Delta disengaged their security system and started turning on lights. “Welcome to our exalted and not-at-all-humble abode.”

“Wait.” Roque had been completely silent ever since he had found out the news that Nile was safe and that there was no longer the immediate threat of firing squads, but was now clearly focusing on the visible slice of the dark jewel toned and brass accented foyer. Nile hastily helped Clay with steadying the much larger man as his confusion sharpened into an alert stare. “Wait, wait, wait. Drew, is that you?”

“Well, you probably would’ve came to that conclusion a lot faster if you ever made the fucking effort to visit us before, Roque.” Delta’s unaltered voice was a pleasantly low rasp as they finished pulling off their headgear to give Nile a brief peek at their beaming face, which happened to be the same one that had been buried in Joe’s neck last night in her vision. Nile felt the blood draining out of her face as she numbly reflected on the fact that their pearly megawatt grin was almost as heart stopping as Joe’s once he got going. “Aren’t you going to give me a kiss for saving your ass again, you big beautiful bastard?”

Roque’s joyful roar of laughter almost deafened Nile as Pooch and Clay both joined Roque in yanking Drew off of their feet with a storm of foul mouthed compliments and rough kisses that made Drew burst into throaty laughter while they tightly hugged the guys back.

“Well, that’s one cat out of the bag.” The rest of Drew’s team were pulling off their grimy combat gear and weapons and piling it into a massive tupperware that was waiting just inside the front door, and there was an odd feeling of something clicking into place as she got her first decent look at them.

She didn’t recognize the dark haired and skinned man who towered above them all with matching matte black hearing aids in both ears as he cheerfully stripped off his outer layers. Nile defintely fucking recognized one of the women, and had a queer sense of familarity with the other dark haired woman that was standing next to her.

“Well, I wish we could’ve met each other again when the two of you weren’t hip deep in shit.” Samara’s almost white hair was glued to her skin in sweat soaked mats, and a scabbing over cut that ran across both of her lips cracked open in a sunny and blood filled smile as Jake and Nile mutely stared back at her in shock. “I guess it’s time for formal introductions then. This is Antonio Barrera-Reyes, marvelous human being, and creator of the prettiest seasonal displays ever created.”

“It’s lovely to meet you guys.” Antonio's firm handshake was accompanied by a flash of deep set dimples and a friendly crinkle of bright brown eyes. “Samara’s really only saying that about my displays because I save her from having to do the office Christmas trees every year.”

“Well yeah, that’s because you’re a fucking godsend in every possible form, Antonio.” Samara squeezed his shoulder before she tipped her head in the direction of the patiently waiting and beautiful Asian woman that was causing every single hair on the back of Nile’s neck to rise. “This is Quire Nguyen, who happens to be both Drew and I’s closest friend, and whose hot sauces will totally fuck your mouth up if you try any of them.”

“Rude. Are you really trying to imply that my sauces won’t just fuck with somebody’s entire body if they try them?”

Quire was brightly grinning back at Samara, and Nile suddenly couldn’t shake the feeling that she was staring at somebody who was currently supposed to be at the bottom of the ocean floor.

Any sketches of Quynh had been lost or decayed into nothing over the centuries. The fact that nobody had the heart to describe her to Nile was fucking her over right now, since living in somebody else’s head for brief snapshots as they continuously drowned didn’t made a damn bit of difference to her chances of positively identifying her.

“Here, we managed to find your swords in one of the warehouse’s backrooms when we were clearing it out on our way to you guys.”

Quire politely held out Nile’s still sheathed swords in their harness, and Nile couldn’t help but try to go back over the few crumbs of information that she had about Quynh. There wasn’t much to start with, and it all circled back to the fact that Quynh was out of her mind with grief, rage and despair, and had continued to be in that same state of mind and location when Nile had dreamed of her less than a week ago.

“Have you been working for Drew and Samara very long?”

Nile’s question sprung out of her before she even realized that she going to ask it, but there was still a small spot of hope that maybe Quynh really did crawl out of whichever ocean that she was in, figure out how to get to America, regain her sanity, become employed, and develop some clearly meaningful relationships in the teeny tiny span of four days.

“I’ve been working with them for…” Quire’s mouth thoughtfully twisted as she glanced over to where Drew and almost all of the guys were cheerfully catching up with each other. “Nine, ten years, I think? But I knew Drew for four years before that, and Sam for twelve years. What kind of swords are those, anyways? They really look old as fuck.”

Nile’s hope for Quynh died as the idea that she could get herself out of the dead end situation with Max turned to ash in her mouth. At least she still had a chance of making sure that nobody else could be dragged down with her. 

They had each other now. 

They probably wouldn’t miss her.

Nile wondered how long it would take for them to forget about her.

\--

Jesus, she fucking hated herself.

Nile bit down on the wet face cloth in an attempt to smother the angonized howl of self loathing and terror that came ripping out of her throat. Her eyes were still burning under the onslaught of tears that had promptly started mere seconds after she had dutifully ended her phone call with Max. The shuddering hiccups started up again as she tried to force herself to start breathing like a normal fucking person, and not the snotty gasps for air that she was currently stuck with. 

She had been the one to initiate contact with him this time, and it was exactly as awful as Nile thought it was going to be as she numbly told him almost everything that he wanted to hear.

Yes, Nile would willingly do whatever he wanted her to do. No, her fellow immortals were not part of the deal. No, they wouldn’t interfere with their business. Yes, she would do whatever she had to do to eliminate any obstacles or people in her path on her way to him. Yes, she would make sure that would be a large enough distraction to draw attention away from the Port of Los Angeles. No, she didn’t get travel sick very easily.

It had gone on and on over the five minute long conversation, and even hurling the cell phone that Max’s decapitated minion had jammed in her back pocket out of the fifth floor bathroom window hadn’t brought her even a small spark of satisfaction.

Nile hadn’t expected her first major moral crisis to happen while perched on a closed toilet lid while she tried not to vomit up the writhing snakes of guilt that were churning in her stomach and chest, but she supposed there had to be a first time and place for everything. Drew and Samara were currently out in their overgrown mansion trying to find some clean clothing for her to wear after they had firmly diverted the guys to the only other bathroom in this place that had a shower or bath in it. 

So yes, Nile might have nightmares from the way they had violently fought to save her ass, but they were still housing, clothing, and feeding her as she actively prepared to betray them even if they had been nothing but warm and friendly towards her and everybody else.

Nile damply cursed into her face cloth as she doubled over into it in one more attempt to pull herself together. They were coming back soon, and she couldn’t fall apart in front of them. She shakily sighed into her hands and stooped a little lower as her back kept quivering. Fuck, she would do just about anything for a hug right now.

The bathroom door swung open with a faint click, and Nile had just managed to hastily scrub her face clean while she glanced over at the sudden movement when something warm and heavy landed on her downturned back with a curious chirping noise.

“Mmmmruphm.”

Dainty little feet dug into her back even as she froze under the negligible weight that was moving up towards the back of her head, and she only had time to marvel at how the animal felt like three times its weight when its pointy paws were painfully pressing against her ribs when the deep throated purring started. A pitch black and short haired cat cheek rammed itself against her ear in a rough shoving motion, and a shaky giggle crept out of Nile as she gingerly reached up to rub a finger across the cat’s own ear as its purring promptly jumped from faintly idling truck to revving speedboat with that one simple move.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty girl.” The cat seemed to agree with Nile’s compliment while she lazily blinked her bright blue eyes at her as Nile tried to lift the jingling tag on her collar up enough to read in the lightless gloom of the bathroom. Nile squinted at the copper circle of metal even as the cat wrapped herself around Nile’s neck like a particularly heavy and vibrating scarf, and was tilting it to figure out whether the cat’s name actually started with a ‘B’ when another much larger cat suddenly sauntered in front of her knees with a soulful yowl and an upraised tail.

The first cat was a sleek little black slip of a thing, and the new one was the complete opposite in seemingly every way except for its desire to get all up in there and fix Nile’s heartbreak. It was a four foot long fluffy storm cloud composed out of dark gray and white fur, an ear and a half, and one neon orange eye that seemed to be staring right into her soul as he sat back on his back haunches and pleadingly waved at her with his front paws.

“What are you after, sweetheart?” 

One huge paw gently dabbed at her thigh with a tiny squeak that had no business coming out of something that large, and Nile took the hint for what it was and gradually leaned back while she tried not to dislodge the cat that was already wrapped around her neck. That was all the invitation the larger cat apparently needed, and Nile actually had to brace herself as thirty solid pounds of delighted house cat nimbly landed in her lap.

“Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell are they feeding you?”

Both cats only purred harder at her startled curse as Nile hugged the larger cat closer to herself, and she didn’t bother lifting her face out of her own personal cloud of silky fluff when Drew softly spoke to her from the other side of the bathroom wall.

“Horrifically expensive cat food, mostly. Little bits of ham or yoghurt if he can get his paws on it.” Drew’s voice came out in a quiet sigh, and Nile lifted her head as she heard them gently tap a finger against the wall that was separating them. “Is it okay if I come in?”

Nile had already found and hidden the things that she needed to keep all of the occupants of the house from getting underfoot as Nile made her escape, so she gingerly freed a hand from where it was gradually getting absorbed by the cat’s bulky fur to tap a knuckle of her own against the wall.

“Yeah, you can come in.”

Drew’s headful of barely there curls peeked around the corner first, and Nile tried her best to smile at them as they ducked into the bathroom while flicking the light on.

Nile’s attempt to look like she wasn’t a total wreck must not have passed Drew’s inspection, because they immediately dropped into a loose limbed crouch in front of her as they offered up a steadily sympathetic look through their long eyelashes.

“Do you want to talk about anything?”

“No, not really.” Nile’s weak smile slid entirely off her face as Drew arched an eyebrow that perfectly communicated the fact that they thought that both Nile and her answer were full of bullshit. Nile, Jake and Tony had all been subjected to that exact same look by Jess on nearly a weekly basis when they had all been living in the same house, and it prompted Nile into blurting out the best deflecting question that she could come up with. “Do you have any siblings?”

“Yeah. Two younger sisters.” Drew’s curious stare melted into a clearly proud grin as they offered up a crooked finger for the purring bag of fluff on Nile’s lap to sniff. “Ozzy is working for the Smithsonian in DC, and Aello is the drummer for a speed metal band.”

“Aello is the youngest, then? Rebellious baby sister and what not?”

“Nope. Middle child, and painfully straight laced.” Drew’s expression turned into a more serious look as they straightened up with a heavy sigh. Nile wished that she could tell anybody about the mess that she was walking into as Drew presented her with a bright pink and black Adidas jacket with a simple black t-shirt and socks neatly folded on top. “You should see if these are going to fit you while you keep trying to distract me, since Samara is still trying to hunt down a pair of jeans for you.”

“Are you sure that you want to give me that jacket? Adidas isn’t cheap.”

“Go for it, that colour is going to look marvelous on you anyway.” The gray cat perked up in her arms with a loud chirp as the stack of clean laundry got closer to them, and Drew hastily steered away from Nile to gently set it on top of the towel cabinet before pointing a mockingly reprimanding finger in the larger cat’s direction. “No, you don’t get to shed fur all over the nice clean clothes just because you want to, Mister. Which is actually his name, if you’re curious about it.”

Nile glanced down at the name tag that was just barely visible in his thick fur, and wryly grinned at Drew as she lifted her head again.

“Are you sure that his official name isn’t Missile Launcher?”

“What? No, his name really is-” Drew’s mouth was twitching and quivering as they tried to continue on with the obvious lie, and Nile couldn’t help but join in with their helpless cackle as they crumpled in on themself with a ridiculous snort of laughter as they batted at Nile’s knee. “Fuck! I named him that when I was younger and dumber, and now I have to try and tell all the veterinarians his actual name with a straight face, and it isn’t much easier to book appointments for Bohica, either.”

The name sparked off a not so distant memory, and Nile immediately tried to smother her startled giggles into her hands as Drew apparently gave up on any pretense of dignity while they actually dropped onto the floor in front of her.

“Please don’t tell me that you named your other cat after ‘Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.’”

Drew’s laughter spiked into wordless wheezes as they jerkily nodded with tears running down their face, and Nile couldn’t have said whether Drew’s less than mature naming theme for their cats was actually that funny, or whether it was just the phenomenon of going through an intensely stressful situation with somebody else and having to release the pressure through the only valve that was available. 

Even her fellow immortals weren’t immune to it after going through hell and back, and Nile gave herself permission to join Drew in letting the pent up strain and anxiety loose in the type of laughter that Nile hadn’t really indulged in since she died for the first time. Both cats gave up in slightly disdainful disgust as Nile and Drew kept snickering, and they strutted out of the bathroom doorway with swaying tails and an air of slightly wounded dignity by the time their giggle fit was starting to hurt.

“Drew, did you know that I only have one pair of jeans? Really, I could’ve sworn that I had more than one pair floating around-” Nile gave Samara an uncoordinated wave as the older woman gave her and Drew a slightly confused, but deeply affectionate grin while she looked down at where Nile had joined Drew on the matte black bathroom floor tiles. “Hi Nile. Baby, why the hell do I only own one pair of jeans?” Samara fruitlessly jiggled the pristine black jeans in Nile’s direction while Drew wrapped their body around Samara’s leg with a quiet purring noise. “I mean, they’re some cute fucking pants, but it’s still weird that they’re the only one of their kind in my closet.”

“Well, you’ve always liked looking at other attractive people wearing them more than you’ve actually enjoyed wearing them.” Drew cheerfully hugged Samara’s leg closer to themself, and Nile felt herself blush as she realized that Samara might have picked the jeans out for Nile for the same reason that Drew was murmuring into the back of Samara’s calf. “I mean, you don’t see me complaining about your sea of teeny tiny short-shorts, yoga leggings and tailored suit pants for the same damn reason.”

A squeak popped out of Nile at the thought of what else she might’ve ended up wearing from Samara’s closet, and she was almost distracted from what Samara said next by the way that she gave Nile’s foot a reassuring pat.

“Oh, don’t worry about me checking you out in the jeans, Nile, because I’m pretty sure that Nicky would eat me alive if he thought that I was making a move on you, and that’s even without Joe and Booker tossing their own boyfriendy two cents in on it.”

The gears of Nile’s mind ground to a frosty and ice filled halt at Samara’s casually disbursed words. They were tossed out with the familiarity of socializing with her fellow immortals, and Nile could feel the scream rising in her throat before she managed to beat it down into a somewhat strained exhale. If they knew that much about her relationship with them, they might be able to easily inform the guys and Andy about where she was, and Nile couldn’t handle it if she had to try and take them down as well.

“Drew didn’t tell you about when we ran into your team and Cougar last night?” Nile managed a jerky shake of her head, and Samara heaved a mildly exasperated sigh as she offered a hand to both her and Drew while they started to get off the floor with grumbled curses in a language that Nile would have hesitated to pin down as Greek. “Shit. Anyway, we know that Clay and your team are both after Max. Our private security firm has also been hired to put a bullet through his head, which will probably come as an extra special surprise to anybody that actually knows that he exists. Hell, his mom would probably want him dead too, if she wasn’t already six feet underground.”

“We didn’t kill her, if that’s something that you’re worrying about, Nile.” Drew’s mouth thoughtfully twitched to the side as they sorted through the change of clothes that Samara had also brought for them, and Nile didn’t miss the warm look that they gave Samara when she wasn’t looking. “Pretty sure that Max might’ve orchestrated that as well, come to think of it. Anyway, we’re going to order some food, make sure that everybody sleeps where there’s an actual bed, and get ahold of Andy in the morning so that we take out Max in a united force. Who knows, we might just have this whole thing wrapped up by tomorrow evening if we’re really coordinated about it.”

Fuck.

Nile was a little disbelieving that neither of them could apparently see or hear the shrill klaxon of emergency sirens going off in her head, but she still managed to get the first shower by winning at their three person game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. 

They cheerfully talked her into using their super fancy curly hair products, since Samara’s natural hair texture turned out to be the visual equivalent of four totally different curly textured wigs all fighting for some space on her scalp while Drew’s near buzzcut was a nudge away from just being particularly tight waves.

Samara and Drew had a lot of scars in various stages of healing between the two of them, and Nile guiltily averted her eyes as they took turns gently kneading an oily cream into the warped and somehow delicate looking scars on the other person’s skin in the places that they couldn’t reach on themselves. It was obvious that it was a long standing ritual for the two of them. 

Nile’s nauseating feeling of being a gutless imposter only deepened as the night went on and she gradually put her plan in motion despite her almost overwhelming longing to forget about Max and just sit tight with the people that she loved. She couldn’t drag anybody into her mess, however, so Nile did her best to grit her teeth and get through the impromptu Pizza and Board Games night.

Drew turned out to be the infamous Knack from Roque and Clay’s stories, which seemed to be a lot more edited than the actual person, who was turning out to be a competitive and clever hellcat once Risk, Unstable Unicorns, and Sorry! landed on the main living room’s low slung coffee table, which was already overflowing with stuff a short time into the night.

Getting everybody’s pizza order had been a battle and a half, which had only escalated once Roque had started talking smack about Drew’s preference, which had turned out to be solely extra pineapple and olives, and triple cheese. Drew had swiftly shut down his protests with a dryly growled,

“Are you really going to give me shit about my pizza order when you know perfectly well that I can’t smell or taste anything? Sweet and sour with some texture from the cheese is pretty much the only thing keeping me going anymore in the food department.”

Their reprimand hadn’t kept any of them down for long, and the pizza was swiftly accompanied with ice cold beer that Pooch and Samara had rooted out from the fridge, and the almost three foot high and bright pink blown glass bong and sticky marajuana buds was all of Drew and Roque’s nimble fingered doing.

It didn’t take much stealthiness for Nile to eventually gain access to everybody’s drinks, and Drew and Samara were the first to slip away upstairs a few hours later as they hazily murmured to each other. Roque and Jake were the last two to fall asleep in the living room, and Nile shakily made sure that everybody was turned on their sides after she finished writing and signing her letter, since she just couldn’t take the thought of them possibly choking to death on their vomit and being unable to roll over.

Now she just had to figure out where Drew and Samara’s room was located.

\--

Please God, don’t let their bedroom be in the fucking attic. Nile’s legs and lungs were burning from having to check every room from the basement to the six floors stacked on top of it, and she glumly stared down the gleaming cherrywood door that was the last one left unchecked on this floor. The smell of damp earth, expensive furniture polish and unnameable spiced perfumes had filled every room that she had uncertainly walked through, and she was a little sad that she’d never get to come back and ask about some of the unusually beautiful things that she had come across in her search.

There had been an almost entire wall of framed cross stitch art in the solarium that had all either been playfully insulting to the giftee, or obscene cross sections of fruit that were cheekily designed after vaginas or penises that had been somewhat concealed in swirls of petals and ribbons.

The twelve foot high mid-air spiral of dozens of taxidermied pigeons that were posed as if they were still in flight hanging from the high ceiling of the library.

The lush and unusual botanical wallpaper that had drawings of plants and animals set against a dark purple background with the occasional smattering of embroidery that nearly ran through the entire mansion.

Dozens of other little examples were still fresh at the front of Nile’s mind as she wearily opened up the last door and unlocked Drew’s frantic and slightly slurred pleading as the room’s apparent sound proofing fell away with the opening of the door.

“-Sam, come on, you need to wake up. Samara, please, something’s wrong-”

Nile couldn’t have described what their master bedroom looked like, since her eyes had immediately been drawn to the massive leather bullwhip that was casually curled up on top of one of the dressers, and the mostly healed lash marks that were striped across Drew’s bare back with the same lovingly artistic care that had obviously gone into decorating into their home.

“Nile. What did you do?”

Drew didn’t bother covering their chest as they warily watched Nile from where they had been trying to shake Samara’s prone form awake, and Nile firmly forced herself to keep her eyes on Drew’s darkly betrayed ones, which looked painfully similar to what Joe’s eyes had looked like when Nile had started to liberate them from Merrick.

Besides, what the fuck was she supposed to do otherwise? It wasn’t like she had real firm ground to stand on with the drugging going on to demand answers about whether or not they were both consenting about Samara obviously whipping Drew’s back open or anything else that they got up in the violated privacy of their bedroom, even though they both seemed to be clearly in love with each other outside of it.

“It’s Max, Drew. H-He’s got some things hanging over my head. I had to do it. I’m sorry.” 

Drew visibly tensed at Nile’s miserable confession, and made the first move towards rolling off the four poster bed and making a dive for a hidden weapon. Nile lunged forward before Drew could make it off the bed, and grimly shoved Drew into an abandoned t-shirt despite the somewhat shaky fight that they were putting up before she finally managed to cuff one of their wrists to the headboard of the bed with the set of handcuffs that she had found downstairs.

“It’s not too late for you, kid. Come on, give us a chance to help you out.” Nile could feel tears rolling down her cheeks as Drew pleaded with her in a gently coaxing tone. “You’ve got to at least tell me what you drugged us with. Was it a date rape drug? Ketamine? My drug tolerance is pretty jacked up, but Samara doesn’t do any recreational drugs, and it might mess with her medications.”

“I used the sleeping pills from your medicine cabinet, and I bumped it up with the THD oil that I found in the same spot.” Nile ignored Drew’s sigh of relief, and instead held out her painstakingly written letter out towards Drew’s free hand as her arm trembled from the unfiltered terror working its way through her system. 

“Can you please give this to Booker, Joe or Nicky when you get a hold of them?” Nile waited until Drew mutely accepted the letter with a small nod, and gingerly placed her holstered swords at the foot of the bed with a stroke of her fingers over the buttery leather that Andy had worked so hard on. “Can you give them the swords back at the same time? They won’t want them to be floating around.” 

“Nile. Are you sure that I can’t talk you out of this?” Nile forced herself to firmly nod at Drew’s question, and had already started heading to the door when Drew issued a gentle final request of her. “Can you make sure that the cats don’t get outside when you leave?”

“I will. I’m so sorry about this, Drew.”

Nile did as she was asked, and was slipping out of Drew and Samara’s estate through their front gate a few minutes later. She firmly ignored both her glimpse of a slim and familiar shadow slipping over one of the garden walls, and the awful feeling telling her that she was making one of the worst mistakes in her life.

She had to run to her new master, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh, we're getting so close to the end! *After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that my previously estimated chapter count is hilariously off. Like slightly under halfway there under estimated. I mean, the not-so distant tide of sugary fluffy romance and group sex is rolling in off of the horizon, so that's going to be fun for everybody involved. <3*
> 
> I have to admit that the angst is getting tossed on by the bucketful, but things will get turned around by the end. 
> 
> All of your glorious comments have been keeping me going like a jacked up hummingbird, and this hummingbird would love more of that sweet, sweet commentary nectar if you want to fling some at me.
> 
> The next chapter's POV will be Booker's.


	9. Will You Give Me A Kiss Before You Go?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things with Max finally come to a head as they discover that Drew and Samara know about things that they shouldn't, and somebody might just painfully lose something after they finally get their hands on Nile. Then there's the whole thing with Samara, which Booker probably should've predicted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things get pretty gorey near the end of this chapter, and there's a teensy bit of what almost could be called suicidal ideation from Booker at the end, so tread carefully if you have to.

“You know, I’m not entirely sure what I thought Drew and Samara’s house was going to look like, but it wasn't that.” 

Booker nodded in agreement with Andy’s dryly put observation while he kept a wary eye on the lanky mansion that was barely visible through the swaying treeline that densely thicketed both sides of the fence. He hastily stifled a sudden sneezing attack into his jacket sleeve, and he gratefully accepted Nicky’s quickly offered handkerchief as he turned his attention back to wondering how they were going to tackle the behemoth of a house.

“Aren’t all the mansions in LA supposed to be blocky little things that are just made out of glass and concrete?” Andy’s voice wasn’t particularly quiet, but Booker could barely hear her even though she was pressed up against his side through the freezing rain that was energetically lashing them in the face.

Andy had been the first person to realize that Drew and Samara might be working for Max after Cougar had filled them in on what Drew had been doing in addition to being a surgeon, and the more sordid things that Samara had been legally doing for money after she returned to England’s shores at the tender age of eighteen.

Cougar had also offered the opinion that any of the soft spots in Samara’s soul had been forcibly sanded off by life’s version of an angle grinder, and that Drew was the only one in that relationship that had any humanity left in them.

Andy had given Cougar the most exasperated expression that Booker had ever seen her produce, and she had patiently filled him in on what sanding off soft spots really looked like when somebody had been kicking around since before the first pyramids were built.

Cougar had accepted the news of their immortality with a calm sense of serenity, and had promptly started haggling with Nicky and Booker about the distribution of socks that Samara had given to them. Honestly, it just made Cougar’s relatively well mannered dislike of Samara that much weirder in comparison to what they had been doing for centuries.

“They’re both too smart to have that many windows in their home.” The unspoken implication that both Samara and Drew had assassinated too many people though a conveniently placed window filled the silence after Cougar’s calm statement. Booker hazarded a quick glance over to where Cougar was heavily leaning most of his weight on Andy’s shoulder. “Where it would be a fucking nightmare to sieze and search that-” Cougar flicked his index finger out to point in the direction of their target, which was a bit too skinny to call a castle, and too dramatic and short to be called a skyscraper. “-House.”

Booker glumly nodded at Joe’s gusty sigh. Yes, their plan to break into the manor probably wouldn’t be as easy to pull off as they would like. Unfortunately, the signal from Booker’s tracking device was still happily beeping away on his phone, so they had to get in there and establish exactly where Drew and Samara’s allegiance laid.

He shot another skeptical look at the twenty foot high fence that was only a few feet from them. Their fence probably wasn’t going to be as innocent and straightforward as it appeared if Drew and Samara were both as wealthy and experienced in the ways of violence as Cougar said they were.

Booker also had enough bad experiences with electric fences to last him for the next four thousand years if he actually managed to stick around that long. He pulled out his most trustworthy compass, and sallied forth (It was really more of a squenching forth through ankle deep mud) to see whether or not the damn thing had a current running through it.

Nicky helpfully tilted a flashlight over Booker’s shoulder so that he could see what he was looking at as he gingerly nudged his compass to within two or three inches of the first wire that was closest to him. It took a long thirty seconds to get his suspected results, but the arrow of the compass eventually vibrated in place. Booker thoughtfully squinted a little harder at it. He hadn’t actually seen it react that vigorously to an electromagnetic field before, and he thought that he could hear the faintest of humming noises as he dropped the compass back into his pocket.

“Yeah, the fence is active. We’re going to have to find another way in.”

The thudding opening notes of the song that he had set as Samara’s ringtone started going off in his pocket, and Booker froze for a few long moments despite the horrific weather and the not so distant klaxon of police car sirens that were apparently scattered through the entirety of Los Angeles. They hadn’t stopped to ask what the hell was going on, and they had instead trekked through the severely manicured and neighboring woods for half a mile, which both Cougar and Andy’s injured legs had strongly objected to.

“Merde. That’s Samara.”

“You already gave her a special ringtone?” Joe sounded decidedly thoughtful about the newly discovered information while Booker tried to figure out how to answer his phone without accidentally killing it in the torrential downpour.

“Don’t worry, you’ve got your own special ring tone in there too if you ever decided to phone me instead of texting. Hey, can you-” Joe flipped a corner of his waterproof poncho up over Booker’s head before he could finish asking for it, and Booker sneaked a hand over to fondly pat at Joe’s hip as he finally accepted Samara’s phone call.

“Hey, how are things-”

“Book?” Her voice was off. Booker frowned sharply as Samara’s normally assured tone broke down into one that was filled with confused fear and made her sound so much younger than the three and a half decades that she apparently had under her belt. Her French had none of its affected upscale polish to it, and Booker couldn’t help but glance towards her home as her voice abruptly cracked. “Fuck, Booker. I d-don’t feel great. I-'' Nicky and Joe’s winces matched up with his own as the sound of Samara suddenly dry heaving reached their ears through the phone. “Sorry a-about that. God, I hate throwing up. Shit. Are you guys just outside of our fence line?” There was a faint noise of crinkling plastic as she feebly spoke again. “How’d you find us?’

“I planted a tracking device on Drew’s scrubs. How do you know that we’re here?” Booker calmly ignored Andy’s warning grumble about giving up the ghost up so early, and instead took another quick look around the trees that they were in to see if there were any motion detectors or cameras that they hadn’t found on the first go-around.

“Yeah, that makes sense. You’re probably tracking one of our laundry hampers, now, though.” Samara’s steadying footsteps came through loud and clear, and a sharp stab of adrenaline rushed through his system at her next words, which were starting to firm up slightly. “You guys have to get up to the house. We’ve got a helicopter inbound in an hour, and we’re going to go save Nile Freeman’s ass all over again. You know, for the second time in six hours, and at the perfectly reasonable hour of three in the fucking morning.”

“You saved Nile?”

“And Carlos’s entire team at the same damn time. Went down as smooth as a person could hope for, and now we have to save her from her fucking self sacrifing ways and Max’s clammy little clutches. Look, will you just get moving already?”

“You’ve still got your electric fence going. How do you expect us to get anywhere in a hurry?” Andy’s voice had settled into the carefully controlled tone that she tended to use whenever any of them had a stubborn concussion that they were having a hard time shaking off, and Booker diligently edged his phone away from her twitching fingers.

“Don’t touch the fence. We’ve got an escape tunnel entrance that’s about four metres to the right of Nicky. Gimme a minute, and I’ll get Jensen to light up the entrance on your side.” 

Booker hadn’t spotted the startlingly large drone hovering six feet above their heads until it lit up with a blaze of light that punched through the gloomy night. He was also grudgingly impressed with how little noise that it was making despite the way the wind was trying to blow it out of the air, and couldn’t help but tensely grin at the way that Andy was murderously glaring at the drone as it zipped a few giddy circles over her and Cougar’s heads before it blew past Nicky with an excited whine.

“Are you still there, Booker?”

Samara’s voice was still being dragged out in lurching, deformed words from pain and stress, and he didn’t pause to think over why she was still talking in French instead of her mother tongue as a theory bobbed to the surface of his mind in the tangled mess of worry, adrenaline and fear of what Nile was going through.

“Are you on drugs right now?”

Booker could’ve happily gone the rest of his immortal life without hearing Samara making a noise like her skin was being slowly peeled off a bit a time, but he was going through it now. Andy and Cougar were already feverishly flipping through the mound of dead leaves covering the buried metal trap door, and he forced his jaw to unclench as her jagged, gasping sobs became loud enough for everybody to overhear them.

It was obvious that Samara was under the influence of drugs, and the implication that they were forced on her against her will was almost as clear.

Joe’s outraged anger was splashed across his face for everybody to see as they funneled themselves down the ladder and out of the pouring rain, and even Cougar managed the short descent with a quietly hissed swear word that Booker had only ever heard Andy say. Nicky lightly landed next to him on the clean, but unpolished concrete floor. Booker took a quick glance at the vein that was violently twitching under Nicky’s jaw as he frostily glared ahead of them at the well lit tunnel while Samara’s breathing started to even out in Booker’s ear.

Even Cougar was looking more concerned than usual in the face of Samara’s less than detailed information about his team and Nile, and possibly even about the fact that Samara was having to pull herself together to start with.

“Can you please put her on speakerphone?”

Booker silently followed Nicky’s murmured request before he passed his phone over into Nicky’s hands as they stalked past the evenly distanced backpacks and duffle bags that were clearly the last stand of Drew and Samara’s caching. Tiny lines solidified around Nicky’s frosty green eyes as Samara’s shallow, hitching breaths nearly echoed in the narrow confines of the gradually rising tunnel. Booker exhaled hard in relief as Nicky’s eyes abruptly softened before he started showing her with some of the gentle kindness and love for humanity that made up his core.

“Ciao, bellissima. How are you holding up?”

Samara’s soft, startled laughter splintered into a hissed gasp of pain with her first breath. Booker shared a frown with Andy and Joe as they listened to the familiar sound of the issues involved with trying to breath through pain when breathing itself was the thing causing the pain to start with. It took a few tense moments, but Samara eventually regained the fragile equilibrium of breathing and talking through the pain.

“Mmm. Bless your heart, Nicky, but I’m not even close to being bellissimo right now.” Samara didn’t quite wheeze as she paused to inhale, but it was still far from the most natural breathing pattern that Booker had ever heard. “I’m half dressed. Puking everywhere. Half of my ribs are bruised. And unwillingly high for the first time in twenty years. Fun, fun, fu-” A brittle cough cut off the end of her sentence, and Booker helplessly clenched his hands as she unsuccessfully smothered a high pitched sound of agony.

“Easy, easy, just take it easy.” Everybody walked a little faster down the tunnel once Samara stopped making that noise, and Booker shot Nicky a slightly alarmed look as Nicky flashed a warm, curling smile that had probably been making people’s hearts go pitty-pat ever since the day he was born. “You’ve got a special ringtone on Booker’s phone. I’m pretty sure it went through a fairly intensive selection process.”

“Really?” Samara’s slightly strained voice was filled with warm affection, and Booker couldn’t help but smile in the direction of his phone. It had taken him an embarrassingly long time to pick the song that summed her up to a satisfying degree, but he had admittedly been marinating in the opportunity to do it for somebody that wasn’t one of his fellow immortals. “He’s on mine as ‘Itty Bitty Pretty One.’ You know, the one by Thurston Harris.”

The distressed set of Joe’s mouth blossomed into a delighted grin as Booker’s mind immediately got sent back to when the then popular song had come into its own. Joe had fallen in love with the song the first time that he had heard it, and Booker had been immediately recruited as Joe’s dance partner whenever Nicky and Andy begged for a quick break from it. They had just about worn the aging carpet in the safehouse’s living room down to the floorboards by the time that they had finally moved on from it, and he now associated that song with the smell of Joe’s crisp aftershave, the sound of his giddy laughter, and September in Detroit.

Booker was still fairly certain that he couldn’t be anybody’s itty bitty pretty anything. He shook his head and told Samara what her song was with a warm inner curl of affection.

“I picked ‘Steal That Car’ by Alice Cooper for you.”

“Oh my god, I love you, Booker.” Samara’s usual joyful burst of laughter got hastily downplayed to an equally happy hiss, and Booker had to stand still for a moment as his world got rocked off its axis by Samara’s heartfelt term of endearment. 

Nobody had told him to his face that they loved him since he got dragged away from his family and into Napoleon's fruitless war.

Sure, he now knew down to his marrow that he was loved by the people that he had gone through the centuries with, but they also weren’t running around and telling each other that in such brazen, straight forward words.

His relationship with Samara was platonic, mutually fierce, and a whole new experience for him, but Booker suspected that his long life would’ve suffered in quality if he had never met her. Even if she was apparently Jack the Ripper and Vlad the Impaler mixed together in Cougar’s less than generous opinion.

“I love you too, Samara.” There. He might’ve had to strategically avoid looking at everybody’s faces as he said it, but now she knew that he felt the same, and that he could actually coax his mouth into shaping the words so that everybody could hear it. He caught a quick glimpse of Andy’s proud smile as he turned his head, and privately vowed to toss those simple little words around more often. “I choose that for you, because, you know…”

“The years where I told you that stealing cars was the only thing that I could do to get food into my mouth or some newspaper to sleep under?” Samara sounded dryly amused about it, even if he hadn’t got the chance to get the full story from her at the morgue. “I’m sure Carlos must’ve filled you in on my career a bit. Do you guys have any questions about it before you get here?”

“You were an asset for MI6?” Booker reached over to rub his thumb across the back of Andy’s nearest shoulder as she wearily started leading the charge into Samara’s interrogation.

“Yes, I did plenty of unpleasant things on the orders of the British government. I even had a pension and everything before I quit.” A faint ding could be heard over Samara’s voice. “Actually, just tell me everything you heard about me, and I’ll let you know if you bump into something that’s incorrect.”

“Works for me. You’re in line to inherit your family’s company, which happens to be one of the most successful weapon and defence manufacturers on the planet.” Samara hummed in agreement as Andy kept going. “You and Drew are co-owners of Silver Lake Security, which is a quasi-military private security enterprise. You’re also highly experienced in enhanced interrogation techniques, and apparently you really enjoy doing that.”

“I hated every second of it.”

Cougar’s face turned brittle at that, even if there was now some confusion mixed in there as well.

“You’re clinically depressed.”

“Nope. I got diagnosed with a pretty major case of Adult Separation Anxiety Disorder when I was twenty-two.” Samara sounded like she was really missing the ability to heave a sigh as Booker finally spotted the ladder at the other end of the tunnel. “My shrink also says that I have issues with emotional honesty, excessive mental compartization, and that I have a strong chance of developing PTSD. Got anything else, or did Carlos actually find out and tell you about the time when I broke a douchbag’s nose with a lacrosse stick when I was twelve?”

“Are you really a billionaire?”

“Fuck no. Not even a millionaire, actually. Most of the family is, but I’ve been shoveling most of my own personal money back out into scholarships, relief funds and charities as fast as it’s coming in. My biological grandparents are still pissed about me changing the company policy so that every person we employee gets paid the same amount as the executives. ”

It sounded like Samara actually was wheezing for breath after the long stream of words that had come pouring out of her in a flood of audibly victorious pride as Nicky led the climb up the ladder.

“Drew actually got the angry letter that they sent me framed for our first anniversary. Coordinated with the traditional paper gift for the year and everything.” There was a soft exhaling noise that must’ve been her current stand in for laughter. “Lemme tell you, mon nounours, it’s like having ten spectacular orgasms in a row every time I read that letter. It lets me know that I’m not a complete asshole. Hi Nicky!”

“What do you think Nicky and I’s anniversary gifts would be at this point?”

Booker thoughtfully exhaled through his nose at Joe’s question while he thought back to the last time that he had the occasion to buy anybody an anniversary present.

“I’m not sure. I saved up and bought Simone a silver hair comb with a few garnets set in it for our twenty-fifth anniversary.” That year also happened to be the last one that they would share together. The memory of seeing the hard won piece of jewelry glinting in her dark curls had kept him warm until he died a cold death in a Russian noose and woke up to find that his world had completely changed. “At this point you could probably get away with a sack of diamonds or pearls-” 

The sharp sound of Nicky’s cursing sent them up the ladder faster than almost anything else could, and Cougar had barely climbed out of the way at the top of the ladder into the equally unadorned sub-basement as Booker and Joe followed suit.

“I’m totally fine. Please, Nicky, you really don’t want to know who did it.”

There was an oddly tense three way standoff between Samara, Nicky and Andy. Nicky was edging closer to Samara with a defiant set to his back as Andy glared at him and Samara did her best to stay out of Booker’s line of sight.

“Who drugged you, Samara?” 

“For fuck’s sake, Nicky, don’t get any closer to her until we find out who they’re working with.”

Nicky bristled at Andy’s reprimand like the world’s angriest nearly six foot tall scorpion, and Booker took a quick look at the stormy frown starting to form on Joe’s face before he carefully started skirting around Andy’s back.

“We’re not working for anybody besides the woman who wants to make sure that Max and Wade never walk the face of the Earth again. We’re already batting fifty-fifty for that, so...” Booker could hear Samara trying to inhale with the same care that most people exerted when they picked up newborn babies, and he quietly slipped past Andy as her shoulders lowered by a suspicious fraction. “I brought the folder with our contract for that if you want to see it- Shit. Hi, Booker.”

Booker could instantly see why Nicky was more concerned with seeing if Samara was alright than worrying about possibly being stabbed with the sheathed combat knife that was securely strapped to the outside of her thigh, which was shuddering slightly with every breath.

She either hadn’t got the chance to, or couldn’t push past the pain and the drugs to pull on more than the few items of clothing that she was already wearing. There was one pair of black pants that looked like they were made out of more body armour than fabric, a highly restrictive looking black sports bra that completely covered her up to the base of her neck, and a sock that made his heart tighten in his chest.

Nile had eagerly showed them all the photo-realistic socks that had been modeled after house cat paws during one of their quick shopping trips in Vancouver before they broke apart from each other, and Andy had silently watched as the younger woman talked herself out of buying the relatively cheap luxury.

Booker had nearly forgotten about it until he spotted Andy and Nile snuggling their feet up into each other's laps while Nicky went through his pain staking method of selecting his choice for Movie Night during that same day. They had both been wearing the matching cat socks that Andy had clearly doubled back behind Nile’s back to buy, and Andy had been blissfully smiling as she playfully flexed her clawed toes in Booker’s direction until he had passed over the communal bowl of popcorn.

Samara was wearing a very similar sock. It had black and grey stripes. None of it distracted Booker from the fact that Samara looked completely awful.

The few areas of her skin that weren’t covered in scrapes, cuts and bruises was a decidedly ashy colour and drenched in a heavy layer of greasy looking sweat that only smelled more acrid the closer that he got to her. It only accentuated the way that her whole body looked like it was pulled as tight as a violin string, which only made her look like somebody was wrenching her apart from the inside.

“Booker?” He glanced up from where the entire right side of her ribcage had swollen into a grotesque shade of dark purple to meet her warily frightened eyes. Booker forced himself to not to follow Nicky’s example by snapping out the worst curse words that he could come up with as he saw the clearest sign of the drugs running through her system.

“Yeah, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, sweetheart. Here, just let me-” Booker tugged the streamlined file folder out of her shockingly steady fingers, and only took the time to pass it off into Cougar and Andy’s waiting hands before he carefully cupped her battered face between the pads of his fingers with all the gentleness that he could summon up as he looked into her eyes.

The unnaturally blown out pupils of her clearly terrified eyes had swallowed up nearly all of their surrounding irises. A fair portion of the blood vessels in her eyes had also ruptured, and Booker did his best to smile at her instead of haplessly clenching his teeth as he nudged her avalanche of hair out of her face for her despite the occasional streak of vomit that had gotten caught in it.

“Can you tell us what drugs the person made you take?”

Joe’s voice was as soft as down feathers, and Booker followed Samara’s jittery gaze to Joe’s sympathetic doe eyes. He wasn’t surprised when the combination of drugs and the similarity of Joe’s damp eyes to Drew’s finally loosened her tongue.

“Nile put THD oil and sleeping pills in my drink.” Samara’s eyes welled up with tears as she spoke with a forced detachment from the words themselves, and Booker numbly registered the way that her fingers were desperately clinging to his waist like he was the only thing keeping her upright. “I t-think Aisha gave us an injection of adrenaline, maybe? Drew thinks that was some form of amphetamine in the syringe along with a few other things, too. God, I hate it.” Her face suddenly pressed itself into his chest, and a conflicted wave of rage swept through him as Booker felt Samara pull him closer by the back of his shirt while she pleadingly sobbed into his sternum. “Fuck, I hate this so much. Please, please get it out of me, I can’t do this again. I’ll do anything if you make it stop.”

Booker would’ve happily ripped out his own heart if he thought for a second that it would help Samara through this. He buried his face in her mostly sweet smelling curls and gingerly hugged her as close as he could get without touching the spasming muscles over her injured ribs, and brazeningly lied through his teeth.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, Samara. Don’t worry, it’s going to stop really soon.” Booker carefully avoided looking at where Cougar and Andy were quickly flipping through the file, and gently steered Samara’s mostly bare form out of sight of everybody else in the barest pretense of privacy. “It’ll all be over soon.”

“They’re both legitimate, Booker. I think that Max must have gotten to Nile at some point. Extortion, maybe. Cougar’s also saying that he and his team know this Aisha woman.” Andy’s sentences were being bitten off into bitter bits of information, and even Cougar was looking pale in the realization of what Nile must’ve done as Andy’s wounded blue eyes flashed in Samara’s direction. “I’m so sorry about what Nile did to you, Samara.”

“You don’t have to tell me that, Andy. Nile can apologize right to my face when I save her ass for the second fucking time today.” There was still a definite wetness in Samara’s eyes and voice, but there was now an unmistakable core of iron back in place as Booker leaned back enough to see the flintily determined look that Samara shot at Andy. “She really fucked up, and I’m going to have to double down on therapy for a while, but I’m going to make sure that kid comes back to you even if I have to drag her back by her ankles.”

“I don’t think you’re really in the best shape to be helping us with getting Nile back, Samara.” 

Nicky was very gentle with the delivery of his statement, and Booker glanced down as Samara disdainfully sniffed at Nicky before she smoothed his now wrinkled t-shirt out with a brisk tug.

“Nicky, please. I’ve dismantled dictatorships with a broken leg, and I eventually managed to seduce Drew after they took a bullet for me in a warzone without even being introduced first. I’ve got this shit, and I own the motherfucking helicopter that’s going to be dragging our asses around.”

She flashed her teeth in a feral grin that Booker had previously only associated with sharp toothed animals that had dinner plans in regards to his squishier vulnerable parts.

“So yes, feel free to get all of your asses onto the elevator while I get the rest of my clothing on.” Her eyes softened for a moment, and Booker let himself get tugged downwards so that Samara would have an easier time pressing a fond kiss to his cheek. “Thank you for trying to make me feel better, Booker. You’re the best.”

“Not a problem, Samara.” He finally gave into the temptation to wrap one of her wildly spiraling curls around one of his fingers before he released it with a stroke of his thumb. “Jesus Christ, how many floors do you have to have to make an elevator worth it in a house?” 

“Well, it had seven floors when we bought it, and we put the elevator and secondary basement level in during the renovations. It really helps with the handicap access- Oh, thank you for finding my clothes, Joe. I was in a bit of a scramble coming down here and unlocking the hatch.” 

Joe looked like he was visibly fighting against his better judgement as Samara reached out for her other sock and combat boots. Booker gave him a dry look from over Samara’s scarred shoulder, and Joe relented with a sigh as he passed her sock over.

“So. Did you just get creative with a curling iron or is that your natural hair texture?”

“All natural, Joe. It still feels like wrestling a crocodile most mornings, but-” Samara’s suddenly stifled scream felt like somebody was stomping directly on the panic center of Booker’s brain. Her teeth were sinking into her bloodless lower lip as she abruptly jerked to a stop from where she had been bending over to pull on her other sock. “I need you to do me a favor, Book.”

“Anything. What do you need?”

“I need you to cut my binder off, because one of my ribs just creaked under it.”

“What?” He wasn’t sure why that stupid, instinctual question fell out of his mouth, since Booker generally did a pretty decent job with keeping up with modern vocabulary and invention, so he had a pretty solid idea on what binders were used for in the transgender community. “Are you...?”

“Yes, I’m male. Can we talk about it later?”

Booker promptly stowed the conversation that he wanted to have with him as he stripped off his long sleeved shirt and pressed it into Samara’s unnervingly still hands as understanding dawned in Joe and Nicky’s eyes. 

“Are you sure that I can’t just pull it off?”

“No. Here, just let me-” He pulled the heavy weight of his curls over his shoulder with his left hand with a slow exhale while he bared his back to Booker. Booker swallowed hard both at the amount of trust that he was placing into him and his knife, and the unexpected state of Samara’s left hand. His pinky finger was completely gone, and the tip of the neighboring ring finger was gone down to the first knuckle with a shiny cap of scar tissue that was pale with age. He gently touched the fragile looking skin before he could think twice about it, and Samara’s morose words exited on a sigh. “I lost them to frostbite during my first year in Paris.”

Booker shivered at the memory of all the limbs that he had lost to the cold. He still wasn’t sure if losing all feeling in the afflicted flesh was a blessing or a curse before gangrene sunk in completely. Samara was already pressing Booker’s shirt to his chest, and Booker carefully exhaled through his nose as he pushed the bone gnawing worry about Nile, and the fact that they were being observed out of his head.

The tightly defined muscles of Samara’s back twitched at the first touch of Booker’s knife before he visibly relaxed before the next careful touch, and Booker marveled at the ease in which Samara placed some of his most vulnerable parts and possible life in Booker’s hands. There were only four people in the world that he would readily put himself in the same position as Samara in front of, and three of them were in the room with them. It only took three excessively careful strokes of his pocket knife to make Samara’s binder fall away from his swelling rib cage. Booker held back from helping with moving their gear into the elevator for just a moment as Samara visibly decompressed with a soft sigh while he leaned back into Booker’s hands.

“I think the local anesthetic Drew gave me finally kicked in.” Booker let a sigh of his own into the back of Samara’s head as he allowed Samara to hold the back of his hand to his cheek. “Merci, Booker.” His fingers twitched at the thankful kiss that Samara pressed to the tender skin of his wrist before he pulled away from him. “Go help them out with their gear. I should be able to handle dressing myself now. Keeping the shirt, though.”

Samara had managed to pull the rest of his clothing and boots on by the time that everybody and everything got into the elevator, and was moving without any obvious signs of pain as he hastily finished twisting his hair into a fraying braid. His arms and shoulders were filling out Booker’s dark purple shirt to a deeply flattering degree, and Booker glanced over at Nicky as he smiled in Samara’s direction while the elevator started gliding upwards.

“I hate to tell you, Booker, but Samara’s much more handsome in that shirt than you ever were.”

Samara’s instantaneously stunning grin knocked the air out of almost everybody’s lungs, and his blinding show of happiness could’ve easily powered several supernovas as he sniffled a little at Nicky’s compliment.

“Thanks, Nicky. I’m pretty sure my hair is also slightly nicer than Booker’s, but nobody’s keeping track, anyway.” 

Booker made an exaggeratedly wounded noise at Samara’s playful teasing just to widen his grin even further, and tried to follow everybody else out into the chaotic arena that was apparently the first floor of Drew and Samara’s house when Samara turned to gently prod Booker and Joe back into the elevator.

“Drew wants to have a quick chat with you two on the next floor up before we get everything on the move. Oh, don’t worry, it’s nothing heavier than anything else that we already talked about tonight. Go, gogogo-” 

Booker narrowed his eyes at him as the doors slid shut and Samara vanished into the den of controlled yelling and more body armour than Booker could shake a stick at.

“Nothing heavier than what we already talked about.” Booker rolled his head over to look at Joe while the older man stared at the ceiling of the elevator before he started talking again in a weary tone. “We’ve been misgendering Samara this whole time. People are being drugged against their will. Nile’s being manipulated and possibly tortured by Max. Yeah, I can’t think of any lighter or fluffier conversational topics than that. What the hell is Drew going to come up with to add to that particular heap?”

“‘Here’s five clues to tell how your extremely distant cousin is actually immortal?’”

“Don’t even joke about that.”

Booker allowed himself to be dragged in tight to Joe’s side in a quick sideways hug as Joe’s fingers compulsively fluttered and flexed against Booker’s waist in a tiny show of nerves. He ignored the anxious writhing in his own stomach and the frantic whirring of his thoughts, and wriggled his cheek up against the side of Joe’s head with a quiet sigh.

“We’re going to bring Nile home, Joe. We’re going to bring everybody home.” He quickly peeked at Joe’s facial profile. His eyelids were tightly squeezed shut, and Booker was willing to bet that he was praying in the privacy of his own head. “They might even have a tank or a fighter jet laying around that we could use to get Nile if it comes down to it.”

Joe’s mouth quirked into a smaller, more pained version of his usual smile as the elevators doors slid open again. He didn’t let go of Booker’s waist even as they stepped into another hallway that was all gleaming honey coloured wood and curiously cheap looking Persian rugs strewn across the floor, which were obviously modeled after more expensive plush rugs. Booker lightly squeezed Joe’s wrist as his hand dropped away from Booker’s waist. He felt his concern double in size as he saw how Joe was taking the news of the possibly life altering trouble that Nile was in as the older man listlessly glanced at the handful of paintings that were dotted here and there on the walls.

“What do you think is up with the rugs? If they already have a house this fancy, you think they would splurge on the real Persian ones.”

“We used to have the fancy ones, but then we admitted defeat and switched to the cheap ones after the fourth time that we had to get projectile cat puke out of them. God, I’m so sorry about the fiasco with Nile and Max, but I’m sure that we can get everything wrapped up pretty quickly if everybody puts their heads together about it.” 

Booker quickly glanced away from one of the paintings depicting a slightly elevated view of a Parisian street to find that Drew was energetically hopping out of one of the bordering rooms as they pulled on a pair of shredded jeans. A particularly spirited jump sent them spinning around to face Booker and Joe while they finished zipping everything up, and Booker frowned as he caught a brief glance at their face before they yanked a black t-shirt past it.

There was a sheen of sweat covering their visible skin, and their left eye was a little glassier than usual- Oh God, why did Booker’s mind have to come up with that sort of pun related stupidity right now? Drew’s right eye probably wasn’t even made out of glass, and was more likely than not to actually be made out of acrylic than anything else. Booker bit down on the inside of his cheek as he furiously focused back on Drew’s face before his brain could come up with anything else that skirted dangerously close to being a Dad joke.

“Guys? Are you staring at my eyes because my pupils are two different sizes, or what? It’s not a whole hell of a lot that I can do about them.”

No, Booker hadn’t noticed that at first, but now he couldn’t stop looking at them as Joe seized the conversational opening.

“Why do you look so normal? I mean Samara looks like she-” Joe vigorously shook his head with an apologetic grimace before barreling onwards. “Sorry, he looks awful. Like inches away from death bad.”

“Practice, mostly. Look, come in for a second-” Booker carefully stalked after Drew and Joe into the small parlor that was filled with velvet upholstered furniture and lush plants, and flinched as Drew jolted to an abrupt halt before they looked back at them with an unnerved look of alarm. “Wait, wait, Samara actually told you that he’s trans? How the hell did that happen?”

“He asked me to cut off his binder because it was hurting his ribs?”

“Man, I’ve told him like a thousand damn times that he should stop wearing his binders when he’s sleeping or injured, but he’s one stubborn bastard about it.” Drew blearily scrubbed their face with their hands even as they gracefully dropped down to sit on the floor. Booker raised an eyebrow at Joe to see if he had any idea why Drew was choosing to sit on the floor instead of any of the perfectly decent pieces of furniture. Joe shook his head. “Well, I really, really hope it went well, since only Samara’s adoptive parents, Quire and I really knew about it up to this point.”

“I can’t say that I have much experience with that sort of thing on either side of it, but I think it went well. You know, comparatively to the whole possible end of the world, Nile going missing-”

“-The two of you being supernaturally immortal and the hairball that must be.”

Booker’s fight or flight instincts fired into action when Drew cheerfully lobbed their bombshell in on top of Joe’s cautious reassurance, and he dug the muzzle of his handgun into the back of Drew’s skull while the edge of Joe’s sword hovered a few feet away from their scarred throat.

“Why do you know about that?”

“In retrospect, I probably should’ve broken the news a little gentler- Easy, Joe, easy.” Drew’s upraised hands didn’t move as Joe’s sword moved a little closer to their neck as they cautiously angled their head back enough to make eye contact with the both of them.

“I got a security ping when one of you was rooting around for our really old family history. I got paranoid and a little curious, and ran some of the hairs that you two left on our stuff in Los Vegas through a couple tests. I tossed in some carbon dating tests just for funsies.” Drew’s hands abortively twitched like they were fighting back the urge to gesture with them as they finished up with a weak, “And you know, that came back with a wildly different result than Samara and I were expecting. Still not the weirdest thing that we’ve seen in the last twelve years, though.”

Booker could see out of the corner of his eye that the tense lines of Joe’s face and stance weren’t softening in the slightest, but there was a definite flicker of curiosity trying to surface under the wary fear in his dark eyes.

“Prove it.”

“You’ve got six hundred and eighty to seven hundred years on Booker, who if the math is right, should’ve been alive around the time that Napoleon was invading Russia. There’s still a certain amount of give and take in the numbers, though.” Drew tensed as Joe barked out a sharp curse word, but they weren’t making any moves to flinch away from his gun or Joe’s sword.

“Why should we trust you?”

“Joe, I’m sitting on my ass in the middle of the floor in an astonishingly shitty defensive position, with nothing more lethal than these jeans, who’s most dangerous attribute is the ability to make my ass look really good. I’ve gone out of my way to make sure that I’m outnumbered, and none of my possible allies are even in yelling distance. So yes, I hoped that you two would feel comfortable if you got confronted about your extremely well kept secret while having the upperhand in this situation. That’s all I’ve got, but I swear on my one functional eye that it’s the truth. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Booker dropped his chin in a clipped nod before he tilted his head towards Joe. He believed them, but he was leaving the final judgement call in Joe’s capable hands. The blade of Joe’s sword shifted away from Drew’s neck by a tiny degree before he ground out a slightly less suspicious sounding question.

“You would willingly let us blind you or worse if we don’t trust you?”

“Yes.”

Booker watched them with wide eyes while Drew passively bared more of their neck as they waited for death with more tranquility than Booker had ever felt about it. A few moments passed before Joe visibly squared his jaw and came to a decision.

“You can put your gun away, Booker. We’re good. We can trust them.” 

Joe’s sword was already being slid back into its sheath as he spoke, and Booker hastily stowed his own weapon away as Drew audibly exhaled in a rush. Booker joined Joe in offering a hand out to Drew while they pushed off the floor with a shake of their shoulders that was probably meant to dissipate some of the high emotion and tension of the last few minutes.

“You’ve got a bull sized set of brass balls on you, Drew.” They looked less distressed than Booker had expected them to be with the scenario that they had just gone through, and he hazarded a quick pat to the join between their neck and shoulder. The delicately soft texture of old burn scars slipped under his thumb mid-stroke, and Booker pulled his hand away even as Drew flashed them a smile that was almost as bright as usual. “Why would you tell us that you and Samara know about us right now?”

“Necessity, mostly. We can’t do everything that we can to bring Nile safely back if we don’t know what we’re running up against in the mortality department. Is it just the two of you that are immortal, or is it Nicky, Nile and Andy as well?”

Booker twitched while his tongue froze in place inside his mouth. 

The last time that he had disclosed information about his family’s immortality had been the desperate, idiotic and deeply depressed pebble that had set off the horrific avalanche of events around Merrick. It had been a not inconsiderable sized mercy call from his fellow immortals when they had finally decided against exiling him, and he didn’t think that he could tell somebody else about them again.

He shot Joe a pleading look so that he could spare Booker from having to say the words.

“Nicky and Nile are both immortal. Andy isn’t.”

“Really?” Drew’s voice sounded audibly surprised even as they bent over to root through an intricately carved ottoman. “Honestly, that’s a pretty big surprise about Andy. I really feel like she’s going to tell me to slap some armour on and get my happy ass on a horse before we fight the Huns, or something. Very commanding, you know?”

“I said that she isn’t immortal, but I never said that she isn’t old.”

“Fair enough. Booker, can you text Samara and see if he knows what all the police sirens are about?”

Booker obligingly sent the quickly composed text message, and glanced back over his shoulder as it got received in a cheerful chirp from the other side of the door that they had entered through.

“Samara?” 

There was a small pause.

“I still like you Booker, even if you are a certified antique twice over. Well, two and a half times over.” Drew was half heartedly concealing a broad smile behind their hand as Samara’s vaguely sheepish voice went on. “I want to take you on a day out and talk about the things that I sure as shit don’t want to talk to my therapist about. Maybe go out for lunch and that sort of thing. I’ve been told that I’m a pretty fun date.”

Joe had a playful spark in his eyes that was projecting the exact opposite of the disappointed expression he had sprawled across his face as he swung the door open, and Booker returned Samara’s small smile as he finished strapping the last of a set of knives in place across his hips.

“What, I don’t get an offer of the full soul baring experience?”

“Sorry, Joe, but all my publicly vulnerable parts got used up about fifteen minutes ago. I’d definitely take you dancing, though.”

That was right. Samara’s gender had been a closely kept secret, and Booker hadn’t done much to help keep it intact. Booker opened his mouth to apologize, and closed it again when Samara shook his head with a warm look.

“What do you like to do when you’re not running the world and trying to save immortals?”

“Rowing, rock climbing every once in a while. Some MMA with enough yoga mixed in to balance everything out. Dancing, obviously…” Samara gave Drew a mildly panicked stare that Booker instantly recognized as the same feeling that he and Nicky occasionally shared when a waitress popped up out of nowhere and sent the thoughts of what they wanted to order off the menu flying. “I swear that I don’t spend my every waking moment in a gym. Babe, help a boy out here.”

“Swearing vendettas against soulless billionaires and people who kick pigeons and stray animals. Karaoke. Possibly knowing why the police are swarming over Los Angeles?”

“Fuck! Yes, sorry, totally forgot about that. Aunt Miri said that she heard it was a series of bomb threats that got phoned in half an hour ago. You apparently can’t go two feet without bumping into a cop, and traffic is even more fucked up than usual, so Nile did a pretty solid job at keeping everybody away from the Port.”

Well, they always knew that Nile was smart, even if Joe’s face was projecting the fear and worry that was forming into an ever tightening knot in Booker’s chest. Nile wouldn’t plant bombs where they would harm civilians, but the lengths that she was going through to run from them wasn’t a good sign.

“Nile wanted me to tell you guys that she’s sorry. She also wanted you to have these back.”

Drew finally straightened up from the ottoman with a solemn expression as they clutched a rumpled looking letter and a pair of sheathed hooked swords that Booker hadn’t seen in the last hundred years. Their last owner had been Lykon during his far too short reign, and they looked like they had held up fairly well in the Floridian weather. They hadn’t been used long enough to buff the new leather grips into a time worn sheen. 

“She’s really not planning on coming back, is she?”

Joe’s voice was much quieter and duller than usual, and Booker silently worked his fingers into Joe’s clenched fist until he finally relaxed enough to hook his fingers around Booker’s.

“We can track Nile as long as she’s wearing my pair of socks.” Samara lightly shrugged at Joe’s miserably bloodshot stare. “If you guys wound up in as many stupid situations as we do, you’d spend a lot of time sewing waterproof trackers into each other’s undergarments too.” Joe’s mouth pinched itself up in a tiny smile, and Booker could almost picture Joe sitting up with a pair of bifocal glasses and a flashlight as he fastidiously hunched over Nicky’s boxer briefs. “Nile also told Jake about you guys being immortal.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me.”

“Time and places, Joe, time and places.”

\--

Jake was somehow exactly what Booker expected Nile’s older brother to be like, and nothing at all of what he had been thinking of. He and Cougar were currently combined together into a breathless knot of relief and trembling hands in the middle of the tightly controlled maelstrom of chaos being reigned in by Clay, Andy, and Drew.

Booker thought it over again as Samara cheerfully threw a spare bulletproof vest in his direction despite the slightly damaged and perfectly adequate one that he was already wearing. Everybody else was getting caught up with the confetti cloud of body armour, weapons, and strategic planning despite Andy’s resigned acceptance of the first item, and Nicky and Joe were both watching Jake with unreadable faces.

He was big, blond, and bouncy enough despite having barely recovered from being drugged that it almost made Booker’s teeth and soul ache from the overall happiness that was obviously radiating from him. Booker hadn’t managed to pull himself together enough to go introduce himself to Jake. It wasn’t really helping any that he was looking for any resemblances to Nile in Jake’s mannerisms, and not finding much beyond an obvious sense of competence. A sharp pain arced under his ribs at the thought that Nile might have also been so effortlessly happy before immortality got dropped on her head. 

Booker glanced over to where Joe and Nicky were nodding along with what Drew and Andy were telling them as they unwaveringly kept their eyes on Jake. Their warily nervous facial expressions finally bounced into a deeply buried memory, and Booker stifled a smile as Samara handed him a protein bar while he mechanically gnawed his way through his own stack of vaguely vanilla smelling cardboard.

“Did you guys ever have to meet any of the in-laws once you all started dating?” 

“Mm, no. Would’ve definitely ended in disaster.” Booker grimaced at the chalky chocolate taste of the snack that he was obligingly chewing his way through, and made a fruitless grabbing gesture with his hand at the small mountain of Gatorade bottles piled in the middle of the kitchen island. Samara raised a thick eyebrow in his direction, and he quickly clarified his wordless request a little more. “A red one, please.” He peeled the cap off with his teeth once Samara handed it over, and got to witness Samara’s sympathetic facial contortions as he watched Booker work it over with his teeth. “How did it go when Drew met your family?”

“Great, actually. Gideon and Marie both love her. I was scared spitless when I first met Drew’s sisters and her Mom, though. Her Dad is a total teddy bear, though.”

“Joe’s side of the family?”

Samara nodded even as he forcefully choked back the last bite of his bar, and Booker wordlessly held out his Gatorade so that Samara could have something to wash it down with. He accepted the offered bottle with a grateful nod, and Booker offered Joe and Nicky a small smile as they approached with their own terrible snacks in hand.

“Hey. Samara was just telling me about Drew’s family and how their Father is a teddy bear.”

Joe’s eyes lit up for a single moment as his smile widened, and Booker brushed his hand up Samara’s back as he fitted an ear piece into the canal of his ear.

“Well, that’s Akiva Al-Kaysani for you. ” They all twitched at the sharp whistle that Samara managed to break through the wave of noise with, and Nicky and Joe both went a shade paler at Samara’s authoritative bark. “Jake! Front and centre, the guys want to know what to get Nile for Christmas.”

Jake’s head jerked upright while he broke free from Cougar, and Booker had just started reaching out for Samara when he slipped away from them with a bold wink. Nicky only had time to hiss a few pleading curses that made a muscle in Joe’s cheek jump before Jake reached them, and Booker resisted the urge to flee from the problem of trying to impress a significant other’s sibling for the first time in two hundred and twenty five years.

Booker had no doubt that Nicky and Joe would’ve done their best to kill each other’s nearest and dearest if they had been in reach of their swords at the time, and he figured that he should demonstrate a marginally better way to go about it.

“Hi, there. You must be Jake. I’m Booker.” 

Jake returned his handshake with a suitably sturdy grip as Booker got gently tugged close enough to smell the other man’s stale sweat and an uncharacteristic whiff of pear perfume. He finally caught a glimpse of Nile in the glint of mischievousness in Jake’s eyes as he leaned in.

“You must be Nile’s writer. She’s got a lot of complimentary things to say about you, Booker.”

“I’m sure that at least half of them were made up.” Booker offered up his best self deprecating smile, and Jake’s smile turned into an even pointier grin.

“Well, she did mention that all of you have pretty eyes, and this is a direct quote, ‘Shoulders For Days.’ So you’re at least delivering on those two fronts.”

Nicky murmured something to Joe in a long dead language, and Booker felt his cheeks burn as he recognized that they were praising his jawline and back, along with other things. They were obviously capable of introducing themselves if they were feeling frisky enough to quietly speculate about whether they could bounce a coin off his ass or not. Booker fumbled around behind his back until he managed to grab Nicky’s forearm, and gently tugged him forward until Nicky graciously gave in and offered his hand to Jake.

“I’m Nicky.” He flashed a smile that was slightly more awkward than usual. “Cougar’s been bragging about you and Nile a lot.”

Cougar made a soft noise that Booker had come to recognize as his near silent version of snorting with laughter while Joe stepped forward with a smile that Booker knew was mostly stapled on in the wake of Nile’s deliberate absence.

“Joe. So, she’s-” 

Booker wasn’t alone in flinching as the sudden deafening sound of a very nearby helicopter started shaking everything in the house. A sturdy glass almost plunged to its demise from a kitchen counter until Andy snatched it out of the air with a snake fast movement of her arm.

Jake’s eyes had already tightened and hardened by the time Booker looked back at him, and the three of them were granted with a much more strained smile as he and his team started filtering out into the foyer.

“It’s nice to have finally met you guys. Living up to the hype and everything, but we’ll have to talk about what Nile’s into in the gift department later.” 

“Well, I’ve seen worse introductions than that.” Booker glumly nodded in agreement as he watched Samara roughly wind his braid into a chaotic mess of a bun. “Did the icebreaker help any?”

“It might come in handy later.” He could still feel the floorboards vibrating through the soles of his boots while Samara and Drew snatched up a few more clips of ammo. “Are your neighbors going to complain about the helicopter landing in your front yard?”

Drew snorted in amusement while they affectionately knocked their hip into Joe’s with the ease of somebody who had grown used to doing it to their siblings and loved ones. Both of them completely missed the fond look that Nicky shot at the back of their heads.

“The Homeowner’s Association can go right ahead and eat my entire ass after the fit that they threw when we ripped up the lawn and swapped it out. Honestly, you’ve never seen a group that was so horrified to see a cute little orchard and some motherfucking berry bushes.”

“Do you think they would be more or less offended if they ever found out that we’re murderous bastards on top of being amateur gardeners?”

“Probably the same amount, but they’d at least think that our immorality is why we ended up letting the flowers and mint overrun the yard.”

Joe twisted his mouth to the side as Drew brought up immorality, and Booker shared a small smile with Nicky as Andy glared at Drew and Joe.

“Don’t even think about it, Al-Kaysani, because I’ll kick both of your asses out of the helicopter if I hear one word play related joke about immortality and immorality.”

“Is that a promise?”

Booker and Nicky’s shared smile simultaneously turned into a frown at Joe’s clearly despondent question. Joe didn’t joke about that sort of thing.

\--

Jesus Christ, they couldn’t have picked worse weather to fly in if they had tried to. The helicopter violently swung its way through a winding curve under the admittedly skillful guidance of the cheerful Asian man who had bellowed a greeting over the overwhelming noise of the plane when they had first boarded. Andy, Clay and Jake were all looking distinctly green as the helicopter lurched downwards without any warning, and Booker had never been so pleased to be the owner of a cast iron lined stomach as he was at that moment.

A unnervingly close lighting strike lit up the dimly lit cabin and revealed Samara’s unnaturally still form as he sat across from Booker on the other side of the narrow aisle that separated them. Another snap of lightning showed where Joe and Nicky were engaged in what could be counted as the most morose game of footsie in the history of time itself. Samara was also intently staring at Booker’s forehead like his life depended on it.

Booker leaned forward to see what was bothering Samara, and the other man abruptly turned a nasty looking shade of gray as he gestured wildly for Booker to hold still. Apparently the nausea from earlier was threatening to come back with a vengeance.

“Is there anything that I can do to help?”

Samara let out a rather sinister looking burp as whatever he said next got buried under the wall of sound.

“What?”

Samara tried to speak again, and Booker still couldn’t hear anything as the helicopter raced upwards in a particularly heinous ascent.

“What?!”

Samara shook his head as he started fishing around in the depths of his jacket. He leaned in and asked Nicky an inaudible question after he surfaced with a battered looking pen and a small notebook that looked extremely similar to the spare one that Nicky usually carried around for Joe.

“What?” Booker sat back with a sigh and a thump of his back against the less than generous padding of his seat as Nicky furrowed his eyebrows and repeated his question in Italian.

They must’ve hit a clear pocket in the weather, because Booker finally managed to hear Samara asking Nicky if he could use his back to write on in clumsy but functional Italian.

Nicky squinted harder. 

“What?”

Booker threw his hands up with a semi-exasperated sigh before he took it upon himself to try and repeat Samara’s question through the unholy racket that was going on.

“Nicky! Samara wants to know if he can use your back to write on!”

Nicky opened his mouth again with a long lashed blink of innocence.

“...What?”

Booker buried his face in his hands as chaos erupted in the form of multiple languages being used by people who could barely hear each other to start with.

Drew was yelling at Nicky in a fluid mix of heavily Cuban accented Spanish and Greek as Aisha, Clay, Roque and Cougar joined in on the Spanish front in various levels of skill. Joe hastily joined in a slapped together and antique version of Arabic and Italian, and Andy was-

“Seriously woman, Latin? How is that supposed to help anybody right now?”

Andy’s shark-like grin made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t speaking Latin with the intention of helping out. Booker was admittedly a little rusty in German, so Jake’s cheerfully antagonistic German was only slightly worse than Booker’s when he started tossing in his two cents on the group argument.

“Oh my God, Jake, keep your tenth grade German to yourself.” Pooch had the world weary tone of a man who had to deal with similarly playful fights on a daily basis.

Samara had drawn into himself as he hunched over his notebook with a wildly shaking hand, and Booker glanced over at Nicky’s face as Samara brusquely shoved his notebook under Nicky’s nose. Nicky quickly read it over before he brightly grinned at the ink smeared scribble.

“Of course you can use my back to write on, Samara. You should’ve just asked about that sooner.”

Booker finally spotted the demonically gleeful light in Nicky’s eyes as he cheekily winked at Samara. God, he was a torment.

Samara smeared his hand through Nicky’s hair with an affectionately annoyed grumble of a Gaelic curse word while Nicky kept shamelessly giggling at the chaos that he had started.

The red cabin lights over their heads flashed into green before Booker could find out what Samara had wanted to tell him. It was finally time for most of them to leave. The helicopter dipped down and hovered in place just long enough for Pooch, Jake and Cougar to bail out of the open door while they dragged a large piece of equipment with them. Booker and Andy had learned more than they ever needed to know about the portable ultrasonic cannon, or LRAD from Jake as he filled them in on it once the expensive piece of equipment got bequeathed to him for the rescue mission.

The high powered sound waves that it produced could destroy eardrums even through walls, and the potential side effects only got worse as Jake had gone on. Tissue shearing and hypothermia could apparently occur at lower frequencies for a long enough period, and lung, liver, and brain damage set in at the higher ones. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see that it could eventually kill a person, and Booker hadn’t missed the way that Andy was warily eyeing up both the cannon and Drew and Samara afterwards.

The helicopter swung back into motion as Andy pulled herself upright into the spot next to Drew. Aisha and Clay followed her as they unclipped their harnesses, and Booker watched Drew’s slightly alarmed body language as Andy swayed close enough to almost press her lips to Drew’s ear while she quietly asked Drew a monotone question.

“Which eye is your blind one?”

“My right one.” Andy immediately circled around to Drew’s right side as soon as Drew answered her, and Drew’s alarmed stare intensified as they swung their head over to keep their working eye on Andy. “Why?”

“I’m going to see just how good you are with that axe, Al-Kaysani. Pretty sure that you getting clipped on your blind side is going to interfere with that.”

The pilot quickly brought them to another hovering stop, and Drew only had time to silently mouth an exaggerated and drawn out ‘Whaaaaat?’ at Joe and Nicky before they launched themself out of the plane with Andy at their side.

Booker managed one quick twitch of his lips at what he strongly suspected would become an in-joke if they made it through this with everybody’s body parts still permanently attached. He gratefully leaned into Joe’s side after he dropped down into the now empty seat that was next to him, and mentally rehashed their part of the plan as Joe started soothingly sweeping his thumb across the back of Booker’s hand. 

Scott (Finally! Booker knew that the pilot’s name was eventually going to come back to him) was going to drop Roque and Samara off on the roof of the building that Nile’s tracker was still beeping away in, and Booker was going to work his way up from the ground floor with Joe and Nicky until they found Nile. It had to work. Had to. 

He wasn’t sure if he’d survive it if it didn’t.

Nicky squirmed up against him on his other side, and Booker shakily exhaled as Nicky’s hand cupped Booker’s closest knee.

“Well, you three better tell Nile that she has to buy Drew and I some apology presents when you find her. A nice little chocolate and chestnut mousse, or a half-way decent Pithivier. Something like that, anyway.” The helicopter was already slowing down again as Samara started to saunter past them with a serpentine sway of his hips. “Good luck, guys.”

Booker tugged on Samara’s hand with his own as he noticed that the steely look in Samara’s eyes didn't match up with his languid movements. Booker wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted until Samara gave him a deeply sympathetic look that didn’t soften the blatant determination in his eyes. Samara ducked his head a little, and Booker only had to stretch a little in order to press a kiss to the dark beauty mark that was just under the outer corner of Samara’s left eye. 

He hoped that the other man could sense what Booker was trying to say with the heartfelt kiss. The small hand squeeze that he received in turn seemed to show that Samara had understood him perfectly.

The lights flashed green for the third time, and Booker let Samara’s hand slip away from his own as Roque edged past Samara with a last minute shuffle of his gear. Samara started striding away from them again, and Booker smiled as Joe spoke up in a feebly playful tone.

“What, am I the only one who isn’t going to get a hand squeeze?”

“Come on, you scoundrel, I’m going to have a hard enough time not mixing you up with Drew at my wedding. Especially if you show up in a pretty enough dress.”

Samara blew a kiss at Joe as he disappeared through the open door, and Booker loped over to the door in time to see Roque and Samara hitting the building's roof with a twin set of tidy somersaults despite the howling wind and torrential rain. Booker squeezed his eyes tightly shut and stood still for a moment at the mouth of the door as the rain impacted with and ran down his face.

They could do this. 

\--

Booker was going to tuck Nile under his chest and never let her go again when he got his hands on her, even if she was a fellow immortal. He ducked under a graceful swing of Nicky’s sword as one more guard lost his head behind him, and grimly threw another clip of ammo into Joe’s hands. 

Sure, he might end up looking like the world’s biggest and broodiest French hen in the process, but it would all be worth it if the terror inducing and gorgeous woman that he loved ended up being safe for longer than five fucking minutes. Besides, Booker was fairly sure that he could pull off the combo of possessive protectiveness and feathers if he tried really hard at it.

Another rapid burst of gunfire rang out from one of the top floors, and Booker would’ve been a lot more worried about Samara, and to an admittedly lower degree, Roque’s continued well being if he couldn’t hear their calmly controlled breathing in his ear.

Things were going marginally smoother than the last time that they had made such a drastic move against Max, and Booker obediently fell in line between Joe and Nicky as they finally cleared their current floor and started carefully heading up the open stairwell that ran up through the length of the building. There were only a handful of floors left between them and Samara, and Booker was starting to wonder if Nile had bailed out of a window despite how high off the ground they were when he suddenly felt the hairs rising on the back of his neck.

“Guys?”

Nile.

Booker was distantly aware of her borrowed pink and black outfit, and was definitely more focused on the way that Nile was watching them with mingled fear and aching longing from the next landing above them. He barely managed to beat out Nicky and Joe in reaching her even as his right side and arm flared in pain while his skin knitted itself back together from an unlucky slash that he hadn’t managed to twist away from quickly enough.

Nile’s miserably dark eyes widened the closer that they got to her, and Booker let out a shuddering huff of relief as she immediately reached out for them once they got in arms reach of her. Nile had the height advantage for once by standing on the next stair above his own, and Booker immediately pulled her into a tight hug as he buried his face into the velvety, sweet smelling skin of Nile’s neck.

Drew’s perfume was still clinging to Nile’s jacket, and her hair smelled like whatever hair products that Samara had been using, but Nile was still the same underneath it all. He shivered in gratitude as Joe wrapped himself around the two of them with hushed little murmurs that even Booker couldn’t pinpoint the breathlessly affectionate meaning of right away. Nicky had already plastered himself to Nile’s back in a bear hug of his own, and Booker would’ve bet that Nicky’s choice of placement was equal parts keeping a defensive back to anybody coming down the stairs, and pragmatically deciding against trying to squish himself into the precarious couple of square feet that everybody else was trying to shove themselves into.

“You scared the hell out of us, Nile.” 

Nile let out a very quiet sob, and Booker rubbed his cheek against her own as two tendons started twitching in Nicky’s forearms while his arms tightened around Nile’s waist. The soft press of Joe’s lips to her forehead seemed to unlock her words with a shaking whimper.

“I’m s-so sorry. I didn’t want to do it, but-” Booker stroked the tip of his nose up Nile’s sharply curved cheek as she hooked her fingers around the golden collar that had been wrapped around his neck since the moment that Joe had put it on him. “You guys shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe.”

A low growl emulated from Joe, and Booker carefully shifted so that Nicky could have easier access to where he was dropping fiery kisses and promises into the delicate skin that was just below Nile’s hairline at the back of her head. There was another burst of gunfire just a few floors above them, and Booker hazarded a glance upwards as Samara broke his near silence with a snarl of exertion through his ear piece.

“Is Andy up there?”

“No. That’s Samara and Roque.”

The blood visibly drained out of Nile’s face as she followed his gaze, and he didn’t twitch away as Nile’s hand painfully tightened on his shoulder while Roque explosively exhaled over the comms.

“Oh, fuck. Shit, I did something really terrible to her-”

“Him.” Samara’s voice was loud enough for Nile to overhear him from one of their ear pieces. “You did. We will discuss it later. Mandated therapy and everything. My tr-” There was a sudden burst of static, and both of Samara and Roque’s channels got wiped out with a mechanical screech.

Nile was clearly more frightened of Samara’s unbending but calm voice suddenly vanishing than his stern words, and Booker forced himself to let go of Nile when she gently pushed at his chest with her hands.

“Did Drew give you guys my letter?”

The rumpled and tear stained piece of paper was still carefully tucked away under his bullet proof vest, and Booker started to pull it out as Joe let Nile’s sleek braids slide through his fingers. Nile touched his hand before he could reach it, and he frowned up at her bloodshot eyes as she reached past his head to cup Joe’s jaw.

“Don’t. Don’t read it yet.” Booker met Nicky’s wary green eyes as Nile firmly shook her head. “Look, you’ve got to get everybody else out of the Port. I’ve got a plan to take Max down, but none of you can be here when I’m doing it.”

“You’re not planning on coming out of this alive, are you?” Joe’s voice was resigned and pained in equal measures as Nile nodded, and Booker wished that he could be enough of an untrusting asshole to ignore Nile’s probably meticulous plan and drag her out of here by carrying her over his shoulder. But no, she was competent and clever enough to pull it off, and they were the guys who loved her enough to let her take a run at it by herself. Fuck.

“No, I don’t think I will. Will you guys wait for me? Just stay in Los Angeles until I get back. Maybe stay in contact with Drew and Samara.” Nile offered them a weak smile that trembled at the edges. “Family bonding time and everything.”

“Are you sure that you don’t want us to stay with you?”

“No, no. But you might have to give me a three minute head start so that Andy doesn’t drag me out of there by my ankle.” The look that Nile shot at him hinted that she wasn’t entirely unaware of Booker’s genius level idea of barricading himself in a safe and comfortable room with Nicky, Joe and Nile. “I don’t suppose that I can get a kiss from you guys before I go?”

Booker couldn’t say whether or not getting a kiss ever helped with facing certain death, but he was definitely going to try his best for her. It didn’t feel nearly as odd as he thought it might be to kiss Nile with Nicky and Joe plastered up against the two of them, and quickly lost himself in it as Nile coaxed her way into his mouth with a barely there moan of his name. The sweet tenderness of the kiss was only enhanced by the way that Nicky’s eyes darkened with fiery protectiveness and desire, and the way that Joe was possessively cupping Booker’s throat while he stroked his other hand up over Nile’s much smoother cheek.

Booker was perfectly aware of just how much he loved belonging to and being possessed by Nicky and Joe, and he finally acknowledged that the other side of that coin existed as he stepped to the side to let Joe properly touch Nile for the first time. Nicky and Joe belonged to Nile and Booker, and the same was true for any possible configuration of the four of them.

Joe and Nile were packing an impressive amount of heat into their kiss as Joe delicately held her in place with his hands. Booker felt his cheeks warm under the force of his blush when Joe made an unseen move with his lips and tongue that caused Nile to make a trembling noise of hunger that was very, very similar to one of the noises that she had made when she had climaxed around Booker’s fingers. He really hoped that Joe might be willing to give him a live demonstration of what he had done to get that noise from Nile.

Nicky apparently had a decent idea of just how far Nile’s fragility extended from the weeks that he had spent training Nile in the less than gentle art of swordplay. There was no doubt that he was just as worshipful of Nile as Booker and Joe, but Nicky and Nile were more lascivious and untempered with each other from the start. They had already nipped and sucked quickly healing bruises into each other’s lips by the time that Nile’s previously unnoticed earwig squawked, and Nile had to breathlessly pull her hands away from where she had pushed them up under Nicky’s shirt.

Joe had been making a noise that was just shy of being a purr as he and Booker watched them go at it, and Booker was feeling a little ruttish and carnal himself at the thought of what else they could do with each other once Nile came back to them again.

There was a thunderous crashing noise and not so distant yelling from two floors above them, and Booker stole a second, much faster kiss as Nile pulled away from them with kiss plumped lips and wide eyes.

“I swear that I’ll come back. Just wait for me.”

Nile spun on her sneakered heels, and Booker slowly exhaled as they watched her sprint down the stairs that they had just come up. The door that they had entered the building through banged open a minute or two later, and Booker stared at the last spot that he had seen her as Joe started trying to get through to Andy or Drew.

A door slammed open above them, and Booker looked up to where they could hear Samara spitting out a line of French curses that were so filthy they could’ve made an entire monastery of priests and nuns drop dead from horrified shock. Nicky’s cheeks were flushing pink from both the vicious swearing and the after effects of kissing Nile when the sound of Samara’s fight continued across the upper landing. Samara bit out a much shorter curse word, and Booker’s heart slammed into his throat as Samara fell back over the railing with another man and started tumbling downwards.

Samara’s face was furious and streaked with blood, and Booker wasn’t sure if he could’ve duplicated the acrobatic twisting motion that Samara pulled off a split second later that ended with him landing on the stranger’s broken spine and the railing that was within arm’s reach of them. He was the very picture of poise and murderous grace for a single moment, and Nicky sprung into action as the man’s corpse started slipping and left Samara with his arms pinwheeling as he struggled to keep his precarious balance.

Nicky yanked hard on Samara’s nearest arm, and Booker started breathing again as Samara fell forward into Nicky’s waiting arms with a ragged sound of relief.

“Thanks, Nicky. Where’s Nile?”

“She gave us the slip. Look, we’re starting to evacuate the Port-” Booker uneasily glanced over at Joe when Samara couldn’t conceal his deeply skeptical expression at Nicky’s answer. “Where’s Roque?”

“His leg got broken. Are you guys seriously going to let Nile flounce off onto a jet with nuclear warheads and Max?”

“Don’t worry about it, Samara. Come on, we’ll give you a hand with getting Roque out of here.”

A muscle in Samara’s cheek flexed as he clenched his jaws, but he stayed silent about Nicky’s less than satisfying answer. Booker and Joe’s jackets got cannibalized into a slapdash leg splint for Roque, and they only had half a flight of stairs left to climb down when Joe broke the conversational silence.

“That was quite the move that you pulled off on the stairs, Samara. Where did you learn to do that?”

“Drew’s been teaching me little bits of gymnastics over the years. There’s also a lot of yoga on an almost daily basis.”

“Do they teach a special class for what you just did?”

“Yeah, it’s called ‘How To Achieve Homicide and Inner Harmony.’ Very popular class after you have to deal with traffic in LA.” 

Joe laughed even as he shouldered more of Roque’s weight, and Booker couldn’t help but notice that Samara’s smile never reached his eyes.

\--

Really, things could’ve been much worse than the current state of affairs.

Granted, a couple dozen of Max’s employees no longer possessed functional ear drums or heartbeats. It also seemed like everybody except Andy had ended up with a rash of minor injuries while Booker, Nicky and Joe had stormed the building in search of Nile. Andy had managed to conceal most of her true feelings about Nile throwing herself to the wolves in front of Cougar and his team, and Booker had felt her stare boring into the back of his head as Andy helped with dragging Roque onto the helicopter before it took off into the worsening weather.

They had managed to snag and detain the squirrely looking scientists who had apparently built and delivered the warheads, and that had thoroughly occupied Cougar’s team until they found out that Booker, Nicky, Joe, Samara and Drew were staying behind in the Port to make sure that any civilians had cleared out of there.

It wasn’t like Booker was thrilled about the flashy private jet that was clearly Nile and Max’s escape route, or the fact that the warheads were still unaccounted for. Still, rounding the corner of one of the buildings and finding Samara steadily watching the back of Nile’s distant head through the scope of a very large sniper rifle was an unpleasant shock to Booker’s system. Utilizing the roof of a rusty Honda Civic as a sniper’s perch wouldn’t have been Booker’s first or fourteenth choice, but Samara was making a pretty decent show out of it as he quickly glanced over at Booker before he switched his attention back to where Nile was a mere speck of pink in the gloom.

“Hey, Love. Did everybody get on the helicopter in one piece?”

Booker hadn’t known him for very long in the grand scheme of things, but he didn’t have a single happy memory associated with Samara handing out ‘Love’ as a pet name. Drew made an undefinable wincing noise in Booker’s ear piece, and he glanced up to see that Samara must’ve replaced his own busted communication device in the short span of time that they had been away from each other.

“They’re fine. You know, I’d really prefer it if you stopped aiming your gun at Nile.” Samara didn’t look away from Nile even as he hummed in acknowledgement. “I don’t suppose that you have any other English pet names to pick from?”

Booker’s less than subtle attempt to distract Samara didn’t work as well as he hoped it would.

“I suppose there’s always Duckie. I’ve never been overly fond of it, but my biological Father used to have a-” Samara tensed slightly, and Booker frowned at his sudden tone of mild wonderment. “Well, would you look at that?”

He only realized that Samara’s request was literal once the blond wiggled the spare set of binoculars hanging off his hip at him. Booker obligingly unclipped them before he dragged himself onto the car’s roof to orient himself with where Samara was looking.

“What are you- Oh.”

Max was striding across the runway while Nile obediently trailed behind him like she wasn’t anything more than a trembling guard dog being dragged along on a leash. Joe and Nicky both made soft, agonized noises over the comms, and Booker belatedly realized that Drew must’ve been showing them the same view from a different angle. 

“Yeah. You know, I think we would’ve still killed Max even if we hadn’t been hired to do it.”

The muzzle of Samara’s gun was unflinchingly tracking Max as he moved, and Booker cautiously touched Samara’s waist. He highly doubted that Samara putting a bullet through Max’s head was part of Nile’s master plan, and Nile had to take priority in this case.

“Don’t do this.”

“You know, that’s exactly what Drew begged Nile to do after she hunted us down in our own bedroom. You save a person and treat them well, and you get drugged against your will.” Samara’s voice was purposely light and breezy as Booker flinched and withdrew his hand. “Thankfully for Nile, we’ve always tried to stay on the more objective side of things like that.”

“Please, Samara.”

“What’s the odds of it happening on your end, Sam?”

Drew’s voice was just as calm as Samara’s, and Booker pleadingly squeezed Samara’s elbow as he answered Drew.

“Nil. You?”

“Same. Top right.”

“Bottom.”

Nile let out an agonized scream as Samara pulled the trigger.

Booker was too busy tackling Samara off the roof of the car to properly pay attention to what Nicky and Joe were yelling over the comms, and thoughts of Nile got temporarily shoved away as they landed with an unpleasant crunching noise. Samara wasn’t fighting back against Booker, and was instead passively lying beneath him as the blood drained out of his already pale face with a pained whistling noise.

“Ribs, Book. You’re on my ri-” Samara’s breathless plea came out of him in a sound of pure agony, and Booker instinctively jerked away from him as he realized what the crunching noise must’ve been. Samara’s hand instantly plowed into his ear with an open handed slap that was just shy of bursting his eardrum, and Booker growled as Samara followed that up by yanking on Booker’s wounded ear with his teeth as he nimbly slammed Booker onto his back.

“Let go of my fucking ear!”

Samara let out a bubbling snarl directly into his ear, and Booker would’ve happily bit him back if he wasn’t already busy with keeping Samara from pinning him down. Apparently Samara’s carefully sculpted muscles weren’t just there to look pretty, and Booker was actually having a bitch of a time fighting back even if he had the advantage of experience, weight and height over the younger man. He snapped his head forward into Samara’s injured ribs, and received a significantly more irritated grunt for his trouble before Samara’s legs threatened to start choking off his air supply as they wrapped themselves around his neck.

“Would you calm down for a half a fucking second? Nile’s fine. I just hit her with a tranquilizer dart, and Drew was in charge of shooting Max.” 

Booker couldn’t move his jaws enough to bite Samara’s thighs while he strategically thrashed in the other man’s grip. He went limp in resignation as Samara suddenly started cranking Booker’s head in the opposite direction of the rest of his body. 

“Prove it.” Samara twisted so that the both of them looked back towards the plane, and Booker squinted through the binoculars that Samara held in place for him. There wasn’t much clearance under the Civic to see through, but it wasn’t hard to tell that the two facts that Samara had told him were both wrong to certain degrees.

“Max isn’t dead, and Nile’s still on the move.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Samara pulled the binoculars away, and Booker sucked in an extra gasp of air as Samara loosened the hold that his legs had on Booker’s neck. “Bugger me with a fish fork. Looks like Drew must’ve winged him in the shoulder.” The inescapable sound of the jet taxiing down the short runway before lifting into the air was almost deafening even at this distance, and Samara’s grip abruptly slackened to the point that Booker was finally able to roll away from him while Samara watched the plane with a predatory look of calculation. “I suppose I could always pull some strings with DC. Scrounge up a Raptor jet, and-”

Samara went mute under the weight of Booker’s glare for a moment or two.

“Nile told us that she had a plan of her own.”

Samara didn’t look terribly shocked by the revelation.

“That makes sense. She’s obviously clever enough to-” Samara’s earpiece made a loud chirping noise, and he glanced over in Samara’s direction as he reached up to lightly tap on it. “Oh hey, Freeman, we were just talking about you. Sorry about nailing you in the knee with that dart-” Samara frowned sharply, and Booker growled as Samara batted him away with his free hand. “Where did you get that? Okay, that- Of course, I’ll tell you how to use it.” 

Booker made another hasty dive for Samara’s earpiece before the blond lashed out at him with the accuracy of a particularly cantankerous mule as he stayed well out of Booker’s reach.

“Look, that thing can cut through rebar, and the motor is virtually indestructible once you activate it. Max’s neck is not going to stand up to it.” Booker temporarily gave up on actually taking the earpiece away from Samara, and instead dropped down next to him to try and listen to what Nile was saying. “All you have to do is break the safety tabs next to the base of the cables, drop the loop over his head, and pull the loose ends firmly. It automatically runs by itself after that. You’re going to want to make sure that your fingers aren’t under the cable when that happens-”

The opening line of a song that Booker didn’t recognize rang out from one of Samara’s many pockets, and he was a little aghast and horrified when Samara chose to start rustling around for his phone in lieu of focusing all of his attention on Nile.

“Oh, keep your socks on, Booker, it’s an important phone call. Nile, give me a minute, I just have to-” Booker made a muffled noise of complaint into Samara’s palm as he threw any residue shyness or politeness to the wind by physically pushing Booker away with a hand to his face. “What’s up, gorgeous?”

He really doubted that Samara was actually taking a booty call from Drew at a time like this, and his theory was confirmed as Samara shot a horror struck look at the steadily climbing jet while he listened to the unheard caller.

“Got it. Does Drew know?” Samara suddenly lurched upright with a distinct shakiness that betrayed the fact that his painkillers were truly starting to wear off. “We will. Take care of yourself until you come back.”

Booker was still puzzling over who Samara had been talking to when the shorter man started pulling Booker up onto his feet with an eerie sense of feverish urgency. He automatically resisted before he fully registered the raw panic in Samara’s eyes, and Booker pushed his aching body the rest of the way up while Samara started dragging him across the pavement in the opposite direction of where the plane was still ascending.

“What the fuck, Samara? Give me a second, and I’ll-”

“Nile activated the warheads on the plane, and they’re going off any time now.” Booker finally noticed the unmistakable sound of Nicky, Joe and Drew running for their lives while he stumbled to a stop so that he could watch the plane with a new wave of fear rolling over him. There was no way that Nile wasn’t going to be swept up in the detonation if she didn’t bail out of the plane. “Come on, we have to move NOW!”

“Nile needs help.”

Samara let out an exasperated snarl of rage, and he automatically jerked backwards as Samara frantically started to dig around in Booker’s ear canal with one of his fingers. His earpiece got neatly plucked out a moment later, and Booker winced as Samara jammed his own earpiece into Booker’s now vacant ear.

“You’re just going to have to deal with sharing some of my earwax if you want to insist on acting like a love sick idiot.” Nile shakily exhaled in his ear as Samara stopped yelling at him, and he finally started sprinting after Samara, who was still towing him by his arm like he was planning to rip it off if Booker didn’t start moving.

“Nile?”

“Hi, Booker.” Nile was obviously doing her best to sound calm in the face of what was about to happen to her, and Booker felt a spike of white hot rage and despair go through his chest as he realized that Nile thought she had to be strong for him. “I don’t think it’s going to be any worse than jumping out of that skyscraper. Might even hurt less, since I’ve got comp-” Nile stuttered to a stop, and her next words were wavering but sincere. “I love you all. I’m coming back to you. Just wait for me.”

Their connection broke with a sad little beep, and Booker barely had a chance to blink before the noise that he had never wanted to hear started filling the air. The sound of the warheads going off were almost indescribable, and Booker glanced back in time to see the jet dematerialize in a scream of tortured metal before the ring of destruction started exploding outwards with a deafening sucking noise. The Honda Civic that they had been fighting next to was already doing cartwheels through the air on the way to where the plane had been, and the ground where it had been parked had already vanished into nothing.

“Book!” His fingers were already going numb from the vice grip that Samara had on his hand, and he rushed ahead to help support some of Samara’s weight as the ground under their heels started peeling away in large chunks. The circumference of the vortex finally seemed to be reaching its limits, and his heart flipped in his chest as he realized that he was going to lose his chance to join Nile.

He didn’t think that he wanted to live as he waited for her to come back. Nicky and Joe might lose their collective minds, but Booker would just have to take a swing at making it up to them if he managed to come back to life again. He hesitated over his decision for an adrenaline filled moment or two before he roughly shoved Samara through a doorway that seemed to be holding steady, and started to turn back to where the vortex was still wreaking havoc.

“Don’t you dare think it about it, you overgrown fuck!” Samara’s nails dug painfully into Booker’s wrist before he had the chance to take more than one step back. Booker barely had the nerve to meet his eyes, which were ablaze with an incendiary ferocity that would easily burn the Earth down to ashes if their owner didn’t keep them in check. The force behind the imploding warheads abruptly yanked him off his feet, and only Samara’s scarred hands and snarled threat kept him from trying to pry himself free. “I’m going with you if you try to let go, Sebastian.”

It only took one look to confirm that Samara wasn’t bluffing about his warning, and that Drew and Samara were probably a couple made in certain people’s Hells.

“Fine! Give me a-” A shiny flash of movement caught his attention, and Booker yanked Samara’s head to the side by a fistful of his curls before he fully registered the large shard of glass that was on a direct collision course with the back of Samara’s head. It was too little and too late. Samara was already howling in agony as Booker ducked his head out of the way, and Samara was missing almost half of the upper part of his right ear in a tattered diagonal slice of crimson flesh when Booker looked back up. The torn away part of Samara’s ear had already whipped past both of them with the piece of glass that had taken it, and Booker numbly noted that Samara’s ear was definitely not coming back from being dematerialized.

The unnatural wind from the warheads abruptly died down a few moments later, and Booker was left with the sound of Samara breathlessly spitting swear words out in a combination of haphazardly slapped together languages. Samara’s hair and neck were starting to get soaked in his still rapidly flowing blood while Booker pulled his toque off, and he mutely accepted the elbow that snapped into his side as he tightly clamped his hat down over Samara’s mutilated ear in an attempt to tamp down the bleeding a little.

He obediently told Nicky and Joe where they were when Samara finally suggested it through a pained growl, and he would’ve kept blankly staring at the massive chunk missing out of the Port if Samara hadn’t started talking to him again.

“What does Nile’s letter say?”

Booker felt just stable enough to read whatever Nile had written to them, so he obligingly fished out the letter and flicked it open with his free hand. He silently stared at it until Samara tilted his head up with an inquisitive noise.

“Max knew we were immortal. He was going to hurt us if Nile didn’t cooperate with him.”

“Can you guys come back from dying like that?”

“I…” Booker’s face painfully twisted in anguish while Samara slid his arms around his back in a comforting squeeze, and he hid his face in the shorter man’s tangled hair as he forced the weak spark of hope inside his chest to keep glowing. “I think so. I really hope we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, the swords in the ottoman were just the secondary back up plan if things went sideways, since Samara WAS the back up plan.
> 
> I adore each and every bit of feedback that I get from you guys, so feel free to comment if you liked this!
> 
> The next chapter will be from Joe's POV.


	10. A Little Winter Miracle.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe goes through plenty of slightly uncomfortable conversations, Drew and Samara both fuck a Christmas classic in every way possible, and two surprises show up on the driveway.

Joe twitched as he took another long look at the crowded Starbucks, which was festooned in red, white, and green decorations. It was filled with visibly exhausted staff members, and horrifically cranky customers out for the peppermint flavoured life blood of the last day left before Christmas Eve. He might’ve bitten off more than he could chew with trying to squeak in his last bit of gift shopping. Drew had already gently pointed out that he absolutely didn’t have to buy gifts if he didn’t want to, since Drew and Samara’s pack generally went in for a firmly non-denominational Winter Holiday instead of the commercialized Christmas that had been shoved down their throats ever since Nile had died at the start of November.

It made a lot of sense with the jumble of religions and people who were going to converge on Drew and Samara’s home on the twenty-fifth. (Drew had helplessly shrugged and told him that it was easier for her sisters to get time off from work if they scheduled around the same time as everybody else.)

Samara was Jewish in the extremely loose sense of somebody who had never really gotten the chance to really dive into it, and his adoptive parents, Aunt Miri, Antonio and Drew’s Mom and Dad were all full blown Jewish. Kieran, Scott, and Booker were all Catholic to various degrees of faith. Andy fully believed in blowing her own horn in the religious department. Nicky was a Christian, and Joe was firmly in the Muslim camp. Ozzy was cheerfully Atheist about the whole thing while Aello swung to the Agnostic side of things, and Drew had wincingly admitted that she was a member of the Satanic Temple. Joe had soothingly told her that she didn’t have anything to worry about after she had informed him about what the Temple actually stood for.

The Winter Holiday mostly seemed like it was going to boil down to spending the day together, some pretty decorations, a massive pot-luck in which everybody was expected to bring something, and a price budgeted exchange of gifts if anybody felt like doing it. Joe thought it sounded lovely.

It probably would’ve been even better if Joe wasn’t deeply depressed over Nile’s painful absence. It wasn’t like he was alone in it, but even being fondly pulled into Samara and Drew’s familial orbit with the rest of his fellow immortals didn’t completely ease the aching pain that had engulfed Joe with Nile’s loss.

Nicky and Andy were both apparently more adaptive about this than Joe was, and Booker and Samara’s bond only seemed to get stronger by the day like they were twins separated by centuries. Joe was genuinely pleased to see Booker developing solid friendships outside of their tight knit group, but he still wished as hard as he could that Nile could come back and find her place in their odd little group.

It wasn’t like Joe hadn’t been sucked into bonding either as he discovered more aspects of Drew and Samara. Samara had initially taken to mandatory bedrest (It had been mostly couchrest) for his ribs with all the graciousness of a chronic workaholic and gym rat who wasn’t allowed to participate in two activities that he actually wanted to do. 

It had only taken Joe a week and a half to discover that Samara was an insomniac of the highest order through the startling experience of running into the other man in the pitch darkness of Samara’s kitchen. It was slightly less heart attack inducing when Joe had eventually found out that Samara was just trying to make a midnight snack of a sandwich with a misappropriated pair of night vision goggles and a slouchy pajama set. One thing had led to another, and now Joe regularly met up with him in the dead of night for a snack and a few words of advice on Samara’s harp playing. Samara’s partially missing fingers apparently weren’t too much of an impediment for that particular musical instrument.

Joe had always preferred playing stringed musical instruments over the wind ones, but his lifestyle had never been particularly conducive to dragging a nearly seven foot tall harp around with him. Joe quietly smiled to himself at the next thought that crossed his mind. Maybe Nile would like it if he played it for her if (when) she came back to them. Most of his shopping had been done with a near constant stream of thought about her, and the priceless gems of information that her older brother had mournfully handed out to them over a nearly empty bottle of gin.

Nile liked sculptures over paintings, and she had dreamed of going to the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom since she was fifteen. She preferred silver jewellery over gold. She liked having pieces of statement clothing that were usually brightly coloured with a certain air of sleekness to them, though exceptions were made on occasion.

(“Seriously, man, that sweater was covered in the ugliest effin’ pudge...pugs! That you’ve ever seen. She kept it for eleven years before she had it made into a pillow!”)

She liked fruit or pear scented perfumes that weren’t overly sweet smelling. Nile had taken ballet classes for five years of her young life until she had gotten fed up with the lingering racism and willingly mangling her feet on a regular basis. Apparently she had fared better with Sculpting classes. She had always struggled with braiding her own hair at the back of her head.

Nicky, Joe and Booker had taken all of the highly desired information in stride. Nile now had a tidy little stash of gifts securely tucked away with the leather jacket that Booker had bought her at the start of all of this. 

Joe might’ve gotten a little carried away once he got into the tiny perfume shop that Samara had quietly recommended to him out of Drew’s ear shot, but there was now a bundle of three vials of perfume oil for Nile that was just waiting to be wrapped up and given to her. He had stumbled across Samara’s peach and cedar-wood scented perfume while he was there, and he picked up an extra bottle for him. Joe hadn’t known that it was possible to translate the scent of musky and ancient smelling books into a perfume, but he hoped that Booker would like the small bottle that he had bought for him.

Nicky had disappeared into the small blacksmithing forge that was tucked away in a corner of Drew and Samara’s property for three solid weeks. Only Drew and Andy had been allowed to see and consult on the mysterious project that kept sending a frustrated and soot smeared Nicky back into the bed that he shared with Booker and Joe. The smell of singed hair and hot metal had finally become a familiar part of Joe’s day when Nicky had triumphantly emerged one day with a matching pair of wide silver ear cuffs for Nile, and Joe’s depression had almost lifted for a moment at the blazing light of victory in Nicky’s eyes.

Booker was still feverishly working away at the gossamer thin cowl that he was knitting for Nile in a raspberry coloured yarn with a generous helping of the catty French bitching and grousing that he and Samara exchanged in a rapid fire stream of barely understandable shared consciousness. Joe wouldn't have been surprised if they had decided not to communicate telepathically out of sheer contrariness. Maybe their occasional Yiddish complaint didn’t translate well in a thought format.

“Are you going to get in the line up or what?”

The stranger’s strident complaint abruptly knocked Joe out of his line of thought, and he ordered his own drink along with Nicky, Drew, and Samara’s usuals on defensive autopilot. He hadn’t forgotten to generously tip his barista, but now he was stuck in the mall’s crowded food court with his sajjada slung over his shoulder in its tube shaped holster, seven bulging shopping bags, a full drink tray, and no way to get home except for the bus. Which was...fine. He didn’t even know if Samara, Booker, and Andy’s flight was going to get in before Samara’s horrifically over caffeinated drink cooled off.

He had gotten a text from Nicky when he had managed to bring Drew safely home from her double shift at the hospital, but he didn’t really want to make his husband fight for a parking spot outside of the mall.

His phone started cheerfully bleeping its way through Samara’s ringtone the moment that he had started longfully thinking of ordering a ride through Drew’s rarely used Uber account, and he heaved his bags up onto the nearest empty table to answer his phone without a second thought.

“Happy belated Hanukkah, Samara.”

Samara let out a giddy little squeak of joy at Joe’s greeting, and he grinned at the timely reminder that the younger man wasn’t some perfectly composed robot that had a cloud of terrifyingly talented assistants following him at all times. Joe was pretty sure that Nicky was still trying to recover from Samara’s ecstatic review of the somewhat burnt latkes that Nicky had surprised Samara with after they had started digging up the potato plants in the backyard. Joe was a little curious to see if Samara would actually start glowing when Joe finally got to give him the bag of Hanukkah gelt that he had managed to find.

“Thank you, Joe! How are you? Were the cats harassing you again during your daily prayers? You know that you can just lock them in the bathroom if they really start pestering you and Nicky again.” Samara sounded infinitely more cheerful than when he had vanished into the suburban wilderness of New Hampshire half a month ago with Booker and Andy, but Joe suspected that successfully clearing Cougar and his team’s names of any wrongdoing would do that to a person.

“I’m fine, thank you. Nicky keeps threatening to buy himself a Baby Bjorn to lug the cats around in, but-” Joe rubbed one of his knuckles into the inner corner of his eye in an idle attempt to distract himself from his upcoming adventure in the Los Angeles public transport system or an overpriced Uber ride. “It’s fine. Are you guys at the airport by now? I can grab some dinner to bring home so that you, Andy and Drew can eat before your fancy gala tonight.”

“Nah, it’s alright. Booker kicked me onto an earlier flight so I could bring his present home before it warms up too much.”

“Present?”

“Well, it turns out that Nile’s niece and older sister are very, very fond of us after hosting us for half a month, and they made some food based tokens of their affection for us since it’s so close to Christmas.” A few car horns blared in the background on Samara’s end of the phone call, and Joe tried not to wince as Samara audibly revved his engine with a casually tossed out curse that was savagely accurate in only the way a LA driver who had emigrated from Paris could pull off. 

“Sorry about that. They made Booker a jar of this really fancy duck rillettes- Jesus Christ, people are getting a little liberal with the death threats today! Andy ended up with a jar of wild blueberry jam, and I got a box of peach Sufganiyots, which I’ve been forbidden to eat until Booker and Andy get here on pain of getting flicked on my half-ear.”

“That’s a bit of a low blow, even for those two.” Joe still hadn’t been able to forget the smell of Drew hastily cauterizing the tattered edge of Samara’s ear in the aftermath of the warheads going off, or the way that Samara had screamed into his bloodied gag when Drew had hurt him. “How did Booker cope with being around Nile’s niece?”

“Good, I think. It probably helped that Beth kept him busy with showing her ice skating tips, the leggy bastard that he is.” Samara sounded decidedly rueful, and Joe took the chance to sweep a napkin over his beard in case any of the whipped cream in his drink had gotten stuck there. “Which is definitely not my sport of choice after I wiped out on my face at the rink last week. Half the bruises on my face are still deciding on whether to be yellow or green. Who came up with the idea to strap knife blades to the undersides of boots, anyway?”

Joe didn’t have to try very hard to sound sympathetic, since it wasn’t easy to not look like a fumbling newborn fawn next to Booker on an ice rink. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Booker’s natural grace in high heels was some sort of transferable skill in that department.

“How long did he laugh at you for?”

“Until he fell over, but he did make it up to me last night.”

Andy had already sent Joe and Nicky a picture that she had taken of Samara and Booker in the booth of a brightly coloured Korean Barbecue and Karaoke Bar that was the site of their last hoorah with Cougar’s team before the three of them had to come back to LA. 

Two of Joe’s stolen t-shirts, a skin tight pair of black latex pants that Samara had apparently poured himself into, an unholy amount of silver body glitter, and a single half empty pint of beer were all featured in the photo as Samara and Booker joyfully cuddled into each other’s sides like a fumbling pair of gleeful kittens. Booker’s broad grin was only accentuated by the smeared dark green kiss mark that Samara had left high on his cheek, and the way that Samara’s slightly tamed white blond curls were threatening to engulf the side of his head.

Joe had already printed and framed the photo. He might’ve printed off a few more copies of it while he was there.

“Andy mentioned that you guys squeaked in a few rounds of Karaoke together last night. What songs did you two go for?”

“Pretty much equal parts Britney Spears and Queen. It turned out that we’re both suckers for a good diva. Booker really put his foot down about ABBA, though, and he kept hiding in the bathroom whenever anybody tried to sing Waterloo.”

“At least it’s not another Christmas carol.” Joe couldn’t help but sigh softly as the endless loop of overly saccharine Christmas music jingled its way into starting over again. “Are you very far out from home? I wouldn’t normally ask for a ride, but I’m pretty loaded down and I don’t really want to deal with an Uber driver or the bus.”

“I’ll pick you up. Where are you?”

“Not the closest mall to home, but the one that has that really good Chinese restaurant a few blocks over from it? You know, it makes that chicken with the-”

“Lotus leaves and clay? Yeah, yeah yeah, I know which one you mean. Did you know that they actually import the clay they use from China just for that chicken?”

“I didn’t know that, actually. Are all of your navigating skills strictly based around finding food?”

Joe couldn’t hear anything but the suddenly strained sound of Samara’s breathing. Fuck. It wasn’t like Samara had many sore spots in his life history, but it still didn’t mean that Joe felt any better when he verbally kicked one without thinking. Samara very carefully cleared his throat before he answered Joe with a distinct rasp to his voice.

“I haven’t really been able to shake the habit since I was thirteen. Hell, you guys saw my mug shots and the tape of me outside the...you know. Kinda craving Chinese now. I’ll meet you in front of the mall in five minutes. See you then.”

Joe flinched as Samara ended their phone call with a very politely controlled farewell.

He wished that they had never asked Copley to go looking for anything that he could find about Samara's five long years of being homeless in Paris. It had been a lot easier to dismiss the younger man’s prideful vanity, paranoia, and mid-level obsession with food as mere personality quirks before Copley had found undeniable evidence of what Samara’s teenage years had been like.

A freshly arrested fifteen year old Samara had been an emaciated skeleton of a human being with bulging, terror filled eyes, and his currently glorious mane of hair had been shorn close to his skull in discoloured mats. Joe couldn’t even guess how many bruises and sores had been hiding under Samara’s mismatched clothing when he had been detained by the police for stealing and selling the latest in a long line of cars and purses. Even Andy had looked away when Samara had immediately limped away from the police station in the tape Copley had found to scrape around in the bottom of an almost empty dumpster. He had tenderly shared the better parts of a visibly rotten sandwich with a pigeon that had affectionately cuddled up to Samara’s dirt encrusted neck and an alley cat that had been noticeably fatter than Samara.

Samara hadn’t shown any major signs of distress from he had been snugly wedged between Drew and the corner of the couch as he watched the footage along with everybody else, but it had taken a lengthy phone call from his worried adoptive parents before he had managed to let go of Drew’s knee or get off the couch again.

Joe never asked about where Samara’s painful looking limp had gone, and he never teased him about the little caches of calorie heavy and shelf stable food that ended up being stashed in the areas that Samara spent the most time in. Well, right up until the moment that he had thoughtlessly joked about it. Joe thoughtfully gnawed at his lower lip while he glanced back at the Starbucks that he had barely managed to fight his way through the first time.

It would certainly make him feel slightly better about fucking up.

\--

Well, nobody could accuse Samara of not being one of the punctual people on the planet. Joe had barely dragged his load of shopping bags outside of the mall’s main exit when the gleaming angular lines of Samara’s muscle car shot past him and into the lone parking spot that a parade of cars had been angling for. The now familiar sound of people screaming at each other over traffic infractions started escalating even as Joe quickly hopped off the curb and started hurrying over to Samara’s- 

Something. Nicky could happily argue and chit-chat with Samara about cars and engines for hours, but Joe could actually feel his own eyes glazing over whenever the two of them started to really get into PSIs and cylinders. Samara had never been offended by the way that shop talk tended to send Joe into a boredom induced coma. He had instead stuck to the sheer aesthetic of the thing when he had invited Joe over to help him pick out the colours of the paint job that Samara had laboured over for two weeks.

It all resulted in the fact that the only things that Joe could firmly identify about the car was its mulberry purple body and pair of matte ebony racing stripes, and that it was somewhat old if Joe looked at it in relation to Samara’s age. He was much shakier on whether it was a Charger, Impala, Roadrunner, or an Oldsmobile. He was fairly certain that it wasn’t a Volkswagen.

“Hey, handsome. You want a hand with your bags?”

It was true that Samara’s scabbed and bruised face was a severe contrast to his crisply tailored wool clothing, but Joe thought he could see the slightest transition to a more sharply angled and square jawed aspect of Samara’s beaming face since the last time that he had seen him. It didn’t take a genius to see that he was obviously going to be dazzling as time went on, even if Joe couldn’t quite picture what he was going to look like as the years went on.

“You stole my fucking spot, you motherfuckers!”

Joe tensed at the wrathful snarl being yelled at their backs as he handed off his sajjada to Samara so that he could securely tuck it behind his seat. He had only started evaluating whether it would be safer to ignore the red-faced man when Samara deployed his verbal counter attack to similar comments, which was usually tailored to each and every person unlike Drew’s usual waspish comebacks.

“Go ahead and get in the car, and I’ll be right back.” Samara’s next words were considerably quieter as he rose up onto the balls of his feet to press a dry lipped kiss next to Joe’s mouth. “He looks like he might be trouble. It might be safer if I deal with him by myself.” 

It was an undeniable fact that Samara could get away with things as a rich white man that Drew and Joe had to tiptoe around. It didn’t mean that Joe felt any less helpless when Samara merrily swanned his narrow mortal ass, fat bank account and finest suits off to the front lines of volatile clashes between peaceful protestors and the police in order to defend other people’s bodily autonomy, rights to abortions, and every person who happened to be a different race than Samara’s deeply Caucasian ass. The fact that Booker and Nicky were almost always right behind Samara at the protests didn’t help as much as they hoped it would, since Samara was still vastly easier to kill than the two of them.

“Be careful. Yell if you need help.” 

Samara cheerfully winked at him as Joe placed a quick kiss on the cheek that had the least amount of bruising on it before he gingerly loped off to the passenger side of the car.

The blond unflinchingly swayed his way up to the side of the increasingly unnerved looking man’s minivan with a smile that was built out of pure sunshine. Joe could hear the faint sound of a child’s curious voice as Samara braced himself against the driver’s side door with a sheepish cock of his head.

He amiably chatted away to the man for less than a minute as Joe carefully watched over him from the car, and Joe’s curiosity came to a sudden peak as Samara’s hand got enveloped between the stranger’s before he gently pulled away from him. Joe got a decent look at the stranger’s trembling smile as Samara strolled back to the car. Samara swung himself into the driver’s seat with a remarkably pleased sounding sigh as he glanced at the still steaming bag that Joe had bought for him at the last minute.

“What kind of snack did you get for yourself?”

“Chicken Calabrese sandwich. I got it for you, actually…” Joe trailed off as he took another concerned glance at the still unmoving minivan. 

“That’s lovely, thank you, Joe. You want to go halfsies on it?”

“Sure.” He distractedly accepted his half of the sandwich as Samara offered it to him with a grease stained napkin, and tapped it against Samara’s half while the other man offered up a cheerful ‘Salut.’ “What- Salut. What did you say to him, anyway?”

“I apologized, and told him that I was jittery from building up the nerve to propose to you over the holidays, hence the hasty parking job.” Samara ate his first bite of the molten cheese and pesto with a little shiver of delight before he expanded on his answer around a mouthful of chicken and bread. “Figured it would get him off our asses with the bumper stickers that he’s got on the back of his van window.”

Joe craned his neck in an attempt to see what Samara was talking about, and caught a quick glimpse of a set of white stick figure window stickers depicting two men, three children and more assorted pets than he could count before the van slowly peeled off around the corner. Samara couldn’t have longer than a few moments to notice them and work out his strategy of how to handle the man. Joe shook his head at another show of the emotional manipulation that Samara indifferently passed off as mediocre schmoozing.

“Clever. You do know that you’d have to take all four of us if you were really trying to marry one of us? Granted, it’d get a little expensive in engagement rings…”

“Nothing but the best for my baby boys and girl, sweetheart.” Samara managed to maintain his bright eyed look of cloying adoration for a moment or two before abruptly breaking down into a giddy case of the giggles. Joe actually got a couple of completely undignified snorts out of Samara once he made a wet kissing noise at him, and he proudly grinned to himself as Samara gradually pulled himself back together.

“No, I can barely keep up with Drew, and I don’t think I could handle Book, Nicky, Nile AND you if any of you guys tried to romance me.”

“Well, there goes our plan for New Years Eve.” Samara’s bright pink blush looked really bizarre when it was layered under his collection of bruises, and Joe might’ve cackled a little bit as he gave Samara the drink that he had got for him. “Well, now you’re just making me feel bad about it, but I suppose you could always take a run at Andy instead.”

“Noooope. I’ve just shared the same bed with Booker and Andy for two weeks, and I think that I can confidently predict the fact that she’d eventually Snu-Snu me to death in half an hour if my heart didn’t give out first.”

“Oh come on, you’re young, springy, and quick on your feet. You’d probably make it to the forty-five minute mark before you croaked.”

“Asshole.” Joe took the insult in the affectionate nature in which it was meant, and obligingly buckled himself in with his seat belt. Samara haltingly backed his car out as he carefully watched for shoppers trudging past them with all the naturally occurring joy and holiday cheer of somebody walking themself to the electric chair. “How’s precious little Liebling doing, anyway?”  
Darling? Joe frowned as he quizzically glanced over at Samara while he neatly threaded them into the congested traffic flow once they got out of the parking lot. He had never heard him throw around the German term of affection before, but Joe figured that he should cover the bases when he answered him.

“Nicky’s fine. You’d know how Booker’s doing better than I would, and Drew’s-” Samara’s face was contorted into the amused position it usually assumed when he was trying his best to not to burst into laughter. “What?”

“Well, I was actually asking about Liebling THE dog, but it’s very sweet that your first thought was about our significant others.”

Liebling was a sweet little white poof ball of a German Spitz that Drew and Samara had started dog sitting for a friend hours after Nile had died. The knowledge that the admittedly lovely animal would’ve sympathetically cuddled up to him after his faux pas didn’t make Joe’s blush feel less mortifying. He hid his face in his hand as he turned to watch the buildings whipping past them at an increasing speed.

“He’s fine. Making a lot of friends at the dog park.” 

“Are you and Nicky still getting constantly hit on when you go there?”

“Mmhm.” It definitely wasn’t Joe’s favourite part of the whole endeavour.

Samara hummed in sympathy before he re-focused his attention back on the road. A comfortable silence reigned in the car for a few minutes as Joe’s mind drifted back to the depression that he had been drowning in since Nile had disappeared.

“Can you tell me a few things about Nile?” Joe warily rolled his eyes over to look at Samara in the wake of his unexpected request. “I’m not asking about her for nefarious reasons, Joe. I know that you’ve been having a really hard time with her temporary-” Joe bitterly snorted through his nose at Samara’s choice of words, and he received a razor edged glare in return. “Yes, temporary, death. It might help if you talk about her without focusing on the sad things.”

“You hate her. Why would you want to hear about her?”

“Don’t try to plant emotions that I don’t fucking feel in my head, Joe. I liked her just fine, and I still feel that way after being roofied by her. She has to learn about the impact that her actions have on other people, but I’m not going to hold something that she did out of love against her.” Joe ducked his head with a burning flash of shame as he saw the calmly reprimanding light in Samara’s eyes. 

“She’s just a kid, Joe. We might’ve had a few more years than she has to get our shit together, and become mature enough to not immediately lash out at people when we’re scared, but Drew’s baby sister is still three years older than Nile. I can’t make you do it, but I’m asking you to pull your head out of your ass and tell me the little everyday things that you love about Nile so you can stop fixating on the things that will eventually poison and destroy your relationships if you don’t drag them out into the light of day.”

Humiliation bloomed anew in Joe’s throat and chest, and he hunched into his side of the car as Samara serenely regarded him for a moment with a look of pure disappointment before he ignored him in favour of driving. It wasn’t like the scenario that Samara had just outlined was wildly implausible, since it was almost beat for beat with the long line of moments that had led to Booker’s betrayal. He hadn’t been made to feel like a bullheaded idiot in quite a while, and never by a person who was an infinitely small fraction of his age. Samara left him to stew in miserable silence without any sign of discomfort or scorn. It only took a few minutes before Joe decided to get over himself.

“When did you find the time to get so wise about relationships and grieving?”

“Both of those things just naturally came to mind when I was still barbecuing sewer rats over a trash fire on a regular basis.” Samara’s smile curled itself into a spritely smirk at Joe’s look of panic ridden horror. “Tell me about which breakfast cereal Nile prefers, and whatever poetry your squirrely little brain has composed about the curve of her lips. Dealer’s choice about which set of her lips that you want to talk about, though.”

“Samara!”

Samara joyfully barked with raucous laughter at Joe’s scandalized complaint as he restrained himself to pitching the empty paper bag at the side of Samara’s head.

He started pouring out everything that he loved about Nile, right down to the way that she constantly left little piles of absentmindedly shredded napkins in every cafe they had ever been in together. The warm weight of her body that he had basked in whenever she had spooned his back on the occasions that they shared a bed or couch together, and the sleek curves of her stretch marked silhouette, which reliably made his blood boil in all the right ways. (He had carefully edited down most of his reactions to that last one.)

Joe felt considerably lighter by the time that they had pulled into the garage at home, and Samara’s pleased smile had a distinctly pleased tinge to it as he helped Joe with carrying his bags into the house.

\--

“Minnie Riperton.” Joe countered Samara’s latest suggestion with the minimal amount of attention needed for composing The Ultimate I Love You So Much Playlist (Samara had been cackling like a hyena when he had came up with the name of the list, and Joe just didn’t have the heart to re-work it.) The rest of his attention was thoroughly wrapped up in not fucking up his half of Samara’s absurd waist length hair with a blow dryer and a round brush as Samara did the same on his other side with a second hair dryer and brush. “I still don’t know how you tackle this on a regular basis without throwing out your back.”

“Raveena. Well, it’s normally a little easier but Drew and Nicky are still faffing around up there and-” Joe’s brush accidentally snagged on a knot while Samara flinched away from his hand, and he apologetically hissed between his teeth as he gently picked it smooth. “At least Andy and Drew might have an easier time getting ready for the gala, benefits of short straight hair being what they are.” Joe hummed in agreement as Samara finished up with his blow dryer. He stilled in place as Samara twisted around enough to turn Joe’s blow dryer off while his shoulders arched up in an apprehensive hunch that didn’t sit well on Samara. “Can I talk to you for a minute about Booker?”

Joe would’ve happily teased him about the possible telepathic communication between him and Booker if Samara hadn’t been watching him in the mirror with real worry in his eyes as he anxiously nibbled at the stump of his left ring finger. Just the fact that he was nervous enough to break out a previously unseen tic when Samara had seemingly beaten any previously existing ones out of himself was a big enough red flag for Joe.

Samara and Booker wouldn’t hurt each other outside of the sparring ring. They approached everything they did together with the same mix of cheerfully bitching and joking at each other as they (Samara was still doing the lion’s share of it) flung compliments at each other at nearly the same frequency as their complaints. It was really something to behold as they goaded each other into ever more complicated configurations in partnered yoga and scathing letters to whichever horrific individuals or companies drew their ire.

Joe didn’t think it had even occurred to the two of them that they could sexually traumatize each other, which was a minor miracle with everything that Booker had gone through and the things that Joe worried might have happened to Samara in the years that he was homeless. Joe still found himself marveling at how grabby and handsy they got with each other with every sign of contented comfort- Oh.

Every inch of Samara’s body betrayed the guilt filled misery that he must have been feeling.

“Do you feel bad because you actually think that Nicky and I might dislike how physically affectionate you and Booker are together, or did somebody else tell you that you should feel bad about it?”

Samara hung his head as he answered him in a very quiet voice.

“The second one. He also said that it was weird that we talked and spent so much time together. It’s just that...Drew can’t understand how certain things have affected me in the long run. Her whole family has been bursting at the seams with this unconditional love for her whole life, and she’s had a pretty comfortable life for the most part. I’ve really only gotten my life kinda pulled together in the last three years. I’d never wish that sort of hardship on her, but…” Samara’s bloodshot eyes were filled with a hopeless emptiness as Joe met his eyes. “I can understand some of the shittier parts of Booker’s life, and he gets parts of mine. I think he’s my best friend.”

“Oh, Sam.” Samara trembled like a leaf as Joe spoke, and he pulled the shorter man back into a tight hug as Samara’s mouth started to wobble. “I can safely say that Nicky, Nile, and I could literally not give less of a shit about what you and Booker do with each other if it made either of you the slightest bit happier or healthier.”

Hope started to dawn in Samara’s eyes.

“You do know that we spend an alarming amount of time kissing or cuddling each other, right?”

“You’re both French. That’s what you DO.” Samara flashed him a watery smile as Joe pressed a quick kiss to the back of Samara’s head with a dismissive cluck. 

“Well, shit, somebody should have said that-” Samara’s voice suddenly broke half way through his sentence, and Joe giddily clapped both of his hands over his own mouth as Samara’s voice abruptly dropped into a velvety baritone that sounded undeniably male. “DUDE.” Samara was almost vibrating with excitement as he gleefully spun around to face him with frenzied joy in his eyes. “Dude, please don’t tell me that I’m just hearing things. DUDE!”

“NOPE! You’re a motherfucking baritone, Baby!”

“DUDE!”

“DUDE!!”

They both tore out of the bathroom so that they could have a little more room to gleefully jump around in as they kept chanting ‘DUDE!’ at each other in an ever increasing tempo while their yelling rose a little in volume with every repetition until they sounded like two worshipping cult members of a God who had a particular fondness for beer kegs and Fraternity parties.

A door finally ripped open at the end of the hallway, and Joe heard Nicky’s shout before he saw him.

“What’s going on, Joe?”

“Samara’s voice just changed for the first time! Dropped like a lead balloon mid-sentence...” Joe felt his mouth dry out at his first sight of Nicky’s unexpectedly changed appearance. He lost the ability to form words just as Samara tackled him with a giddy war cry as they tumbled down the hall with the force that Samara had collided into him with. Joe managed to end up on top as they finally came to a stop at Nicky’s feet. 

Nicky made a softly amused noise at their antics as he swept the shining dark hair of his wig over his shoulder with a careless gesture of his hand. Samara appreciatively whistled beneath him while Joe was still taking in the sight of his husband’s carefully accentuated face. Drew and Samara both seemed to view jealousy as a useless emotion in their relationship and Drew just looked like a very smug cat that had eaten a whole cage of canaries as her fiance blatantly looked Nicky over with wide blue eyes. 

“You look marvelous, Nicky. Hell, you might be able to kill somebody with those eyelashes that you’ve got on.” 

“Doe eyed death trap.” Drew’s fond description brought a wide grin to Nicky’s face. Joe kept admiring what must’ve been Drew’s deft touch with the purple toned eye makeup that only made Nicky’s eyes look larger and greener as long black eyelashes fanned out over it all.

Drew hadn’t done much to Nicky beyond highlighting his bone structure, but Joe could easily see that special care had been paid to Nicky’s mouth. Joe felt his face burn at the realization that Nicky must’ve explictively showed Drew exactly what shade of lip stain it would take to bring his mouth to the exact colour that it turned in the aftermath of an orgasm. 

“You're still having fun, Nicky?”

“Yes, even if I only look pretty because of the make up.”

Joe immediately opened his mouth to protest against Nicky’s self-deprecating dismissal when the new found velvet of Samara’s voice beat him to the punch.

“You’ve always been beautiful, Nicky, but now you’re beautiful with a little bit of makeup on.”

Joe couldn’t argue with that. Nicky blushed at Samara’s simply put compliment while Joe kissed the back of Nicky’s nearest hand as the elevator audibly slid open behind them at the other end of the hallway.

“You’re going to be a very dangerous man with that voice, Samara.”

“Samara doesn’t need any help with being dangerous, Nicky. It honestly destroys all of the seductive mystique once you hear him fart in yoga class. Or when he tries to murder an ice rink with his face in front of you. Twice.” Booker sounded cheerfully antagonistic as he gave Samara a barbless verbal poke, and Joe twisted around enough to see Booker and Andy wearily grinning at them as they dragged their suitcases along behind them. 

“Go fuck yourself with the tree branch that you died on, Booker.”

Booker dropped his suitcase while his grin stretched even further in genuine delight, and Joe howled with laughter as Booker responded to the mildly petulant insult and Samara’s sudden voice change with,

“DUDE!”

\--

“Well, at least it looks like the three of them are having a decent time at the party.” 

“Mmm.” Joe lifted his attention away from where he was idly kneading at Nicky’s shoulders under the long sweep of the wig that he hadn’t taken off yet, and the steady weight of both Nicky and Booker as they cozily cuddled up together in the fork of Joe’s legs. Booker was awkwardly twisting his neck so that he could keep an eye on where Copley was distantly projecting the security footage on the living room TV from the glittering charity fundraiser that had a view of Drew, Samara, and Andy while he diligently scrubbed it of any sign of Andy. 

Copley knew of Samara through distant intelligence contacts, and there had been a solid year or two of overlap in the CIA when both he and Drew had worked there. They had known each other well enough that Drew had asked after the health of Copley’s late wife, and Copley had felt comfortable enough to comment on the minor knife wounds and mountains of paperwork that had clung to Drew like ticks.

Joe still thought it was funny that Copley was clearly more dismayed about them keeping company with Drew rather than Samara, even if the blond was seemingly more bloodthirsty and manipulative than his soon to be spouse.

Drew and Andy leaned towards each other as the skirts of their jeweled toned gowns swirled together on the small settee that they were perched on. Andy steadily nibbled her way through what Joe was willing to bet was a crab puff as Drew lazily gestured her way through the unheard conversation with a champagne flute with one hand. 

Her other hand was idly playing with the black leather collar that was wrapped around Samara’s neck and barely peeking out from his silvery velvet suit as the blond man gradually melted from the affectionate attention. He stayed demurely curled up on the floor as he pillowed his head on Drew’s thigh. His eyes were half closed from pleasure as he foggily kept up with the conversation a half a beat behind the other two, and Joe looked away from the television as a memory welled up from only four weeks ago.

Both Drew and Samara had patiently sat the nearly complete group of (current and former) immortals down for a deeply uncomfortable and illuminating conversation after two different accidents. Nicky had come across Drew dabbing iodine into a pair of deep set bitemarks strewn across one of her shoulder blades three weeks into their extended visit. Joe had found a numbly catatonic and totally unresponsive Samara on the couch in the solarium while Drew had been doing an emergency snack and water bottle run in the kitchen less than two days later. 

It turned out that the two of them both switched between being Dominants and Submissives for each other. The simple thing was that Drew liked to be in pain when she was feeling submissive, and Samara liked to be very gently coaxed into a spot deep in his mind where he briefly didn’t have to think for himself or remember anything anymore.

They definitely weren’t domestically abusing each other, and they had a fat stack of suggested pamphlets and websites if anybody had more questions about it. Nicky didn’t threaten to call the cops again, and Joe and Booker both had some interesting reading material to ponder over while they both tried to not mentally apply it to the two people who had just lectured them about it.

“I’m pretty sure that Andy only went with them because she was trying to give us some private time together.” That was a little more blunt than Joe had been aiming for, but he needed to lay it all out for Nicky and Booker before he lost his nerve. “I want to take a break from sex until we either find Nile or she comes back to us. I feel weird just thinking about it without Nile, and we barely got to spend any time with her, and I just- ”

“It’s okay, Habibi. We don’t have to do anything like that.” Joe felt his face crumple up in a sudden well spring of relief with a confusing wave of bone deep sadness flowing after it as his chest heaved in a half choked off gasp at Nicky’s reassuring answer. Booker seamlessly finished Nicky’s next comforting line before Nicky had a chance to say it, and Joe gratefully hid his face in Booker’s chest as the taller man crawled up to him.

“We love you so much, but we- Well, I haven’t wanted to have anything to do with sex since November.” Joe felt Booker’s chin flex against the top of his head as he hid a smile there. “I can’t blame the two of you if you guys don’t want to be with me in the same bedroom after sleeping with Samara for half a month. Pretty sure that his body glitter and perfume is permanently embedded in my skin from all the drooling he did on my back in his sleep.”

“He drools in his sleep?” Joe felt his sudden, overwhelming despair start to drain off a little at Booker’s cheerfully resigned complaint and the way that both he and Nicky were pulling him close.

“Like a toothless bulldog that’s trying to eat raw eggs.”

“Blllurgh!” Joe rolled his head up onto Booker’s shoulder with a smile for Nicky’s sound of disgust once the mental image fully set in. He quietly sighed into the side of Booker’s neck once the laughter that had followed it died off as Joe felt Nicky regretfully smooth his hand down over Joe’s back. “I do have to admit that I might’ve prepped a little tonight for possible reunion sex. You know a little life affirming intimacy-” Joe wasn’t alone in giving Nicky an immediate look over as his husband ruefully shook his head. “No, not like that. Just a bit of lingerie to go with the hair and everything.”

“Give us a peek to show us what we’re missing?” 

Nicky rucked up his shirt on one side, and Joe appreciatively hummed at the ethereal little bralette of nearly transparent mesh that was beautifully embroidered with pale pink and gold threads. It had some thin white straps in some very artistic places. The shirt went back down.

“You look wonderful, my love. Booker and I will have to do a little shopping of our own in that department so that the three of us can give Nile a proper show.”

Booker immediately inhaled underneath him, and Joe belatedly realized that he might have suggested something that the younger man didn’t want to do.

“I don’t think they’ll have stockings in my size.”

“You would be amazed at what they have, Booker. I got this from the same place as some of Drew’s things, and they’ll do bespoke work if push comes to shove. She’s got this marvelous blue snake embroidered one piece-” A small possessive noise popped out of Joe’s chest before he could try to hold it back at the thought of Nicky looking at flimsy little slips of fabric in relation to his admittedly beautiful cousin. He took the bear hug that Nicky wrapped around his ribcage in the manner that it was given.

“Calm down, it wasn’t like she was wearing it at the time. It seemed a little absurd to get my panties in a twist over her showing it to me after she recommended the shop and put all that work in with the hair and makeup. Don’t look like that, love, I don’t mind waiting until we can put the proper courting in with Nile first.”

Booker made a dryly amused noise at Nicky’s word choice.

“What’s wrong with courting? We courted the hell out of you, didn’t we?”

“It’s a stuffy word choice. Was the courting the bit where Joe was holding a trash can for me to puke into, or the part where I provoked him into threatening to show his and your dicks to me and Nile after I compared them to your swords?”

“The whole thing. Groundwork was laid, Sebastian. Wooing?”

“Still stuffy.”

“Pursuing?”

“Slightly better.”

“Currying her favor?”

“Going in reverse.” Nicky’s small smile revealed that the last one was purposely old fashioned. Booker finally offered up a suggestion of his own. “Seducing?”

“Partly that, at least, but I want everything that the three of you have to offer. It’s not just about the sex.”

Booker heaved a massive sigh of agreement as he passively went limp on top of both Nicky and Joe. Joe let out a small groan as Booker wriggled his face into Joe’s clothed armpit with a newfound confidence in mutely demanding affection. 

“Right back at you, Nicky. Do you suppose that dating would be the right term?” Joe lightly ran his fingers through Booker’s slightly unkempt hair as Booker addressed his next words directly into the couch cushion that was under Joe’s back. “Nile’s never been to a beach that wasn’t in New Hampshire. Not really prime basking in the sun and swimming territory. It’d be nice if we took her to the beach on a day out when she comes back.”

“You do burn in the sun like somebody set fire to you.”

Booker dismissively flapped his free hand at Joe’s faintly concerned murmur.

“Supernatural healing takes care of that. It’d be worth it even if I couldn’t heal from it in a few minutes.”

“I’d like to feed her some of the ripe fruit from the garden.” Joe couldn’t help but lick his lips at the thought, and he smiled as Nicky rubbed his cheek against his own. “Drew’s pretty sure that the mandarins and pomegranates should be ripe any day now.”

Drew and Samara both toiled over their gardens and orchard, but Joe had been a little surprised when he finally realized that it was more of Samara’s true pride and joy and one of the few places that he showed a side of himself that he didn’t display in the merciless glare of the public. Granted, it was mostly just Samara expertly guiding his assistants through the running of his companies over speakerphone and viciously bitching in French to the nearest plant about whoremongering mice and their chewing ways while he dug around in the garden. Joe mostly helped out in the garden just for the entertainment factor.

And yes, Joe might’ve been day dreaming lately about slipping spicy blackberries and intensely sweet wild strawberries into Nile’s luscious mouth with only the use of his tongue. He was pretty sure that both of Nicky and Booker’s minds must’ve been on a similar track as their eyes darkened.

“That sounds like a great plan, Joe. Personally, I’d like to-” Nicky suddenly tensed against his back, and Joe followed his gaze over to where Copley’s broadcasted footage had stopped streaming on the TV. “Where’s Andy?”

Booker’s thumbs were already blurring across his phone’s screen when Joe turned around to ask him to phone Andy. She picked up on the second ring, and Joe’s greeting strangled itself to a very confused death on his tongue at the unexpected song coming across from her end.

“-No cunts, no twats. I only like cocks, and cocks like me too!” That was definitely Drew and Samara manically singing in slightly slurred unison, and Joe desperately tried to reclaim some dignity as Booker started snickering into Joe’s sternum.

“...Andy?”

“Hi, Joe.” Andy was audibly amused as she tried to raise her voice above the vaguely familiar caterwauling. Her next words were lost under a spirited,

“-Mom says that the cock would eat me up, but then Teacher says cocks are vegetarians. There’s lots of room for him in our two-car garage, I’d feed him there and wash him there and give him his massage!”

Booker breathlessly wheezed from the laughter that was shaking his entire body, and Joe felt his cheeks turn red from the raunchy lyrics being cheerfully bellowed into the phone as Andy calmly spoke up again.

“We’re on our way home. Drew and Samara are fine, they’re just-”

“-Don’t want a doll, no dinky Tinkertoy, I want a cock to play with and enjoy!”

“Filthy degenerates.” Drew and Samara’s singing took on a distinct wailing high note as Andy spoke again. Nicky made a sound like he was dying from a very slow death. “They’re also high off their asses. Seriously, this limo looks like the backstage of a Willy Nelson concert.”

“Is that the Christmas song with the-”

“Yes. Hang on, they’re coming in with the big finish.”

“I want a cock for Christmas, only a cock will do! No cunts or twats, I only like cocks and cocks like me too!”

“Good job, guys. You’ve officially fucked up ‘I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas’ beyond all repair.”

Drew and Samara dissolved into a chorus of delighted cackling. Samara choked his way to a breathless stop before Drew could manage to do it, and Booker let out a yowl of laughter from the floor as Samara giddily stage-whispered into the phone.

“W-We’re gon-gonna sing about Andy next! She’s gonna be so embarrassed! Gonna embarrass Andromache of Scythia!”

“Don’t you even think about it-” Drew and Samara simultaneously raised their voices in song before Andy could finish threatening them or Joe could warn them off of their hare-brained plan. 

“Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful? Isn’t she precious? Less than one minute old, I never thought through love we’d be-”

“I need to get the fuck out of here, Joe.” Andy sounded more horrified by the gooey song being sung about her than any raunchy lyric. He had to bury his face in Nicky’s shoulder so that his laughter could shake out of him in an almost silent way. “Oh thank Nicky’s fucking Christ, we’re home. Can you guys get out here and give me a hand with getting these two into the house?”

“We’re on it, Andy.”

They could hear the running limo’s almost silent engine as they got closer to the front foyer, and Joe only gave Nicky a slightly confused smile as he returned from his detour to the kitchen with a small jar of coconut oil and a handful of cotton pads. Andy was standing in front of an open limo door with her hands braced on her emerald swathed hips, and the stern commands that she was shooting at Drew and Samara probably would’ve worked a lot more effectively if she could’ve tamped down her audible amusement in the slightest.

“You both need to get out of the limo right now.”

“We are out of the limo, woman.” Samara’s giggling was huskier than it had been even before the three of them had left for the party, and the obvious culprit and cause was the storm cloud of pot smoke that was still boiling out of the back seats. “Kinda.”

“No, you’ve wilted out of the limo a little bit. Big difference. Booker, can you give Samara a hand with oozing the rest of the way out of the car?”

Joe finally got a decent look at the two of them as Andy moved out of the way, and he promptly hid his grin in his hand. Drew and Samara’s heads and shoulders were resting on the pavement of the driveway while the rest of their bodies were still crammed together in the open door of the limo. He had never seen two very stoned jackals cackling at each other in formal evening wear, but he couldn’t imagine that it would’ve looked all that different from the sight in front of him.

“On it. Come on, Sammy, we’re going to get you up and-” Booker straightened up with his newly acquired load with a grunt of effort. Joe waved back at Samara as the much younger man draped himself around Booker’s neck and shoulders like a fox fur stole with a beatific smile. Joe was honestly impressed with the way that Booker was still staying upright and balanced despite the 5’8” and one hundred and eighty pound weight that was awkwardly wrapped around his torso. “I’m going to run him up to his room first. Are the three of you going to need a hand with Drew?”

“Nnnope. I’ve gotta- I’ve got this.” Drew’s close-fitting navy blue dress lost a few of its gleaming black beads to the rough pavement as she managed to pull herself off of the ground and onto her feet without any excessive wobbling. Her copper coloured stilettos got kicked off in the general direction of the front door after one of her ankles almost twisted sideways in one. Her dark blue lips curled into a warm smile as Nicky wandered close enough to offer his elbow to Drew with his mysterious oil in tow. “Are you a little scared of taking your fake eyelashes off by yourself?”

“I really, really am. Please help me?”

“Of course.” Drew was still falling short of her trademark stalk as Joe dropped her abandoned shoes off on one of the boot racks just inside of the foyer’s doorway, but she was already swiping two of Nicky’s cotton pads through the coconut oil by the time that he caught up with them. “Just close your eyes for a minute, Nicky, and it’ll all be over.”

Nicky’s shoulders quivered with a silent laugh of his own as Drew gently pressed the oil soaked pads against his closed eyelids.

“Are you nervous about meeting my sisters tomorrow, Joe?”

“A little bit. Are we still leaving for the airport at six thirty in the morning?”

“We are. Don’t worry about Aello and Ozzy too much, Joe. Can you poke me and Samara awake if we’re not up by five thirty?”

“Sure.” Joe sighed into his hand as he watched Nicky’s face twitch with the effort of holding still. “We met Nile’s brother. It would’ve been nice if she could’ve been introduced to your sisters. Meeting the in laws and everything.”

“You never know what could happen. I’ve been getting a good gut feeling about that lately- Victory and success!” Drew was beaming as she gestured at a wide eyed Nicky with two freshly peeled off and spiderly looking sets of false eyelashes by the time he looked up. “Maybe we’ll get a Winter Holiday miracle with Nile.”

“Well, it certainly wasn’t a Winter Holiday song that you debauched in the limo ten minutes ago.”

“I’ll have you know that ‘I Want A Cock For Christmas’ is a time honoured holiday classic in Greece.”

“I really wish that I could be one hundred percent certain that you’re lying.”

\--

“Do you think that Booker has managed to pull himself back together by now?” 

Drew’s bloodshot left eye was safely hidden away behind his pair of mirrored aviators as he took a break from sipping away at his bottle of Pedialyte when Joe glanced down at him. Drew’s hangovers apparently drove him to be even quieter and cuddlier than usual. 

Joe didn’t have the heart to move away from the way that Drew was hugging Joe’s right arm to his chest while he rested his cheek on Joe’s shoulder. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Drew was trying to provide a little silent solidarity in the face of the occasional semi-hostile or suspicious look that was getting shot in their direction from the other people that were milling through the airport.

“Probably. I don’t think that he was really expecting Samara’s whole production with the getting down on one knee and the little box of cufflinks. I know that he’s really excited about being Samara’s Best Man at the wedding under the shock of it, though.” Joe grinned a little at the very recent memory. “He probably would’ve reacted a lot worse if Samara hadn’t have looked like a complete trainwreck this morning. Who did you pick to be your Best Man, anyway?”

“Roque. He’s in charge of planning our joint Bacchanal with Booker and my sisters.”

Joe took a somewhat clumsy sip of his latte with his less dominant hand as he tried to pin the name to which member of Cougar’s team that it belonged to.

“Is he the massive black guy with the silver tooth and all the…”

“Knives? Yeah. Now that Booker’s in, me and Samara are now the two shortest people in the wedding party.”

Joe frowned a little as he thought it over. Drew was only shorter than Nicky by a spare inch, and Samara wasn’t exactly five foot and nothing.

“Are your sisters on the tall side?”

“That’s putting it mildly, actually. I’m the shortest person in my whole family. Ozzy’s six-three and change, and Aello’s six-one. Mom always says that we’re her Leggy, Leggier, and Leggiest.”

“All of that height must’ve cropped up after my generation.”

“Clearly, if you’re the spokesmodel-” Drew twisted away from him with a gleeful squeak of laughter as Joe took his revenge by scrabbling his fingers over Drew’s absurdly ticklish rib cage. “Fine, fine, you’re plenty tall! You’re going to spill your coffee if you don’t stop that-” Drew suddenly perked upright before he gave Joe’s attacking hand an excited squeeze. “That’s Ozzy over there!”

It was immediately obvious that there were a few differences between Drew and his sisters. Ozzy was just out of easy yelling distance, and Joe could only really tell that she vaguely looked like Athena if the goddess happened to be a few shades darker than both Joe and Drew and had the habit of slinking around in artfully torn dark clothing with a large grey dog gracefully padding along next to her in a dark sweater.

“Ozzy!” Drew’s baby sister immediately looked up from tying her long black braids into a ponytail at Drew’s unrestrained bellow, and a wide grin swept as her face as she finally spotted them. Joe hastily pushed himself to his feet as Ozzy broke into a sprint towards them with her dog and suitcase in tow. She dropped her suitcase and the dog’s leash once she was only a few feet away from Drew. Joe frowned as he tried to figure where the fairly loud whirring noise was coming from as Ozzy athletically snatched Drew up into a bear hug so that she could spin him around with a delighted laugh.

“Damn, boy, you’re still looking fantastic even with the hangover!” Drew made a nauseated noise of complaint as Ozzy finally stopped spinning, and Joe froze as he spotted Ozzy’s right leg through her black jeans, which were almost more strategically placed rips than whole fabric. “Come on, Drew, the bottle of Pedialyte is a bit of a dead giveaway.”

The entirety of Ozzy’s right leg was made out of gleaming segmented titanium plates and joints that adjusted themselves with a whirring noise every time she moved with it. They smoothly flowed against each other as Ozzy moved again, and Joe felt a flash of horrified embarrassment wash over him as he belatedly realized that he had been staring at Ozzy’s prosthetic leg long after she had set Drew back on his feet and turned to face Joe.

“You must be Joe. I’m Ozzy, and this sucker was congenital long before Drew tried to make losing body parts sexy.” Ozzy looked wryly amused at his reaction to her leg. Joe firmly accepted her offered handshake as the sharp smell of paint thinner and borax drifted off her clothes. “Drew mentioned that you’re also into painting?”

“Is your jacket actually made out of tinsel, Leggiest?” The new voice coming from behind Joe was bright and lilting without any of Drew’s rasp or Ozzy’s drawl. The tone of playful needling also smacked of an older sibling getting in all the teasing that they could pull off in a short time span. “I didn’t know that you could shake the Rockefeller Christmas tree until a jacket fell out of it.”

“Well, that’s just one of the many perks of being born without a sense of shame, ‘Lo. Pity you can’t relate to that.”

“It’s just as well that you’re shameless, since I’m the only out of the three of us that inherited any sense of fashion from Dad.”

Drew made a deeply wounded noise as Ozzy and her still unseen sister indulgently bickered at each other over Joe’s head (and wasn’t that a bit of a trip in itself?) Drew’s sly wink let Joe in on the fact that their argument wasn’t nearly as serious as it sounded, and that it was probably a regularly occurring event.

Joe twitched as a cold nose suddenly pressed itself into his open palm out of the blue, and he instantly glanced down enough to find that Ozzy’s dog was wedging his muzzle into Joe’s hand with an affectionate swipe of his tongue. Joe hadn’t had a chance to take a good look at the incoming dog before he had gotten distracted by Ozzy, and his only impression had been that of a large muscle laden dog. He wasn’t going to offer his fingers up for a tickle until he got its measure. The dog let out a loud sigh against Joe’s wedding ring, and Joe took his first real look at it.

Oh, he was completely safe.

Joe relaxed enough to give the pale gray dog a proper chin scratch through his wiry fur, which instantly set the soulfully bug eyed, horse faced, and astonishing gangly greyhound into such a fit of ecstasy that his bulging brown eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head. Any intimidation that could’ve been caused by the dog’s clearly customized leather jacket was completely lost in the sheer amount of uncut Derp radiating off him. The dog flailed his way onto his back in a scrabbling plea for belly rubs while his tongue gracelessly flopped its way out of the corner of his mouth.

Andy was going to adore him. Drew flipped one of Liebling’s fancy dog treats into Joe’s hands with a low murmur.

“His name is Gorgeous Gabe. He understands German more than he does English.”

“Guter Junge!”

Gabe let out a joyful yowling screech that brought what felt like half of the airport and a surprised Ozzy and Aello’s attention directly on him and the madly wiggling dog. Joe sheepishly grinned as he imagined the sound of Copley’s distant wailing and despairing before Drew gracefully dragged him out of the pool of embarrassment that he was floundering in by shamelessly tossing his younger sisters into the same pond.

“Aello, do you want to introduce yourself to our cousin now that the two of you have finished bringing dishonor on yourselves, our whole family, and our non-existent cows?

“Oh sugar sticks! God, I’m so sorry about that, I’ve been horrifically rude to you. I’m Aello.” Joe finally got to see what his last cousin looked like as she dropped into a crouch next to him in her little powder gray wedge booties with her heavily tattooed hand stretched out in an apologetic handshake offer.

She was clearly an individual into her own, but Joe could definitely see the similarities to both Ozzy and Drew in her razor sharp bone structure, her almond shaped eyes, and the whip-like silhouette that they all shared. Things started changing after that. Her black hair dropped in a smooth line past her chest, her eyes were a bright hazel compared to Ozzy and Drew’s dark brown, and all of her limbs were a canvas for the spiky black landscape and city skyline tattoos that covered them.

“Oh, it’s alright, you don’t have to apologize about that. I’m Joe, by the way. I love your outfit and your tattoos.” Her buttoned up short sleeved shirt and shorts could have easily been dismissed as a prim outfit if the shirt wasn’t made out of a pastel purple mesh with a black bustier underneath it, which coordinated neatly with her shorts. An odd mix of chemical laden fruit scents finally reached Joe’s nose as he glanced down at the unmistakable city that had been tattooed from Aello’s left ankle to her thigh. He grinned at the childish colouring job that had been wildly scribbled outside the lines of the tattooed black spikes and curves with scented markers. “I think somebody coloured in Cairo for you.”

“What-” Aello stretched her left leg out as she stood up to see what he meant before a sudden thought seemed to strike her. She abruptly twisted around enough to look at the back of the same leg before she let out an exasperated groan. “Oh fudge, Anika got Santorini as well. No wonder all the flight attendants kept giggling at me after I changed outfits on the plane.”

“Take it easy, Aello, I don’t think drummers for speed metal bands are supposed to swear that viciously.” Drew shot Joe another deeply pleased wink as he started pulling both Aello and Ozzy’s suitcases along behind him while Ozzy reclaimed Gabe and started leading the way back down to the parking garage.

“They do when they’re trying to help raise their two very gay best friends’s six year old with their girlfriend. Honestly, most of the bands that we end up meeting with at festivals really try their best around her. One of the guys from Sternum Snapper actually gave her-” Joe flashed an encouraging smile at Aello while she stammered to a stop over the ever present whirring of Ozzy’s leg while they all piled into the elevator. “Sorry, Joe, you don’t want to hear me blab on about my kid.”

“No, no, I’d love to hear about her. Does she like colouring outside of the media of your tattoos?”

Aello was still hesitating slightly.

“Come on, Mami, show off a little bit. Where’s the photos of our darling Niece?”

Aello caved. Anika was apparently the cleverest, sweetest, and prettiest little girl on the face of the planet. Joe appreciatively oohed and ahhed over every crayon depicted moo-cow, fluffy cloud, stylized human skull, and bass guitar photo of Anika’s art that Aello had on her phone on the way down to the Suburban that Drew had borrowed from Booker. Joe automatically headed for the front passenger side door after he helped secure both the suitcases and Gabe in the back cargo area. Ozzy physically blocked him from reaching the door handle with a demonic gleam in her eyes.

“How old are you, oh darling cousin of mine?” 

Drew and Samara had both sworn on the pain of Andy’s retribution that nobody outside of themselves would ever find out about their immortality, so Joe was thoroughly lost about why Ozzy was acting so intense about his age. A glance at Drew only gave him another swirl of unease as he saw Drew’s shark-like grin. 

“Sorry, Joe, but the seating arrangement is set up on an age hierarchy. Oldest in the front, and youngest in the back. How old are you again?”

He wouldn’t dare.

Drew’s ever widening grin assured him that he would in fact do it, and that he’d enjoy every second of shoving a nearly millennium old immortal in the back seat like a juice stained three year old. There might even be a colouring book involved, which Joe wouldn’t necessarily protest against.

It wasn’t like Joe was particularly skilled about guessing the ages of mortal human beings anymore, so he couldn’t even realistically bluff about his age and still keep it above however old the three siblings were. He weakly offered up how old he had been when he had died for the first time.

“Thirty-three.”

“Forty-two.” There was a pained spark hidden away in the back of Drew’s eyes as he offered up his own age. Nearly a decade older than Joe’s mortal life span.

“Thirty-five.” Aello smirked at him with the security of somebody who had grown up riding shotgun.

“Twenty-nine and three quarters.”

Drew disdainfully snorted at Ozzy’s statement while he pulled himself up into the driver’s seat with more grace than he had earlier that morning.

“Girl, please. You know that we only count whole years in this operation. Do either of you kids want me to stop for a Happy Meal and a juice box for you on the way home?”

Joe and Ozzy’s outraged noises only seemed to make Drew more smug as he smoothly reversed out of the parking spot.

\--

Joe was theoretically aware that he should’ve been enjoying the early group breakfast with everybody as they cooked and flirted. The three siblings were yelling at and playfully goading each other in a combined blur of flawless Spanish and Greek that erratically snapped out into the occasional curse or turn of phrase in English. 

He was pretty sure that he was going to have a nervous breakdown if he didn’t get out of there soon. Joe felt his eyes burn as he tore his eyes away from where Andy was cautiously scoping out the newcomers as Aello teased Nicky about him being too young to risk dying at the hands of a triple shot of Cuban coffee. Ozzy was ignoring Drew’s scolding to get off the kitchen counter or at least stop blocking the cabinet doors as she flexed her bionic leg for a curious Booker while she explained the mechanics of it with a crooked grin.

Herbs. He was getting out of here as soon as he finished destemming the bunches of basil and mint for Drew’s salad. He was having a hard time keeping the mint stem from shaking long enough to pull leaves off of it.

It hurt just looking at Aello and Ozzy. 

Nile should be here. Ozzy’s hair and age were both similar enough to Nile’s that it only made the ball of grief and distress in his throat wind tighter and tighter. He’d be fine. He only had to- The gentle whirring noise of Ozzy’s leg tidily severed his line of thought moments before she lazily slouched against the side of his chair with a clearly practiced effort put into not looming over him.

“Drew said that you’re the one working on the water colour painting in the solarium?” Joe jerkily nodded in response. “I want to pick your brain about it a little bit. Do you mind coming with me for a few minutes?”

“Sure.” Joe didn’t quite lurch out of his chair, but all of his limbs felt like they were losing the ability to bend as he decided to go along with Ozzy’s request. It had to be quieter than the kitchen at the very least.

Ozzy moved with a careful deliberation that Joe hadn’t noticed earlier at the airport, and she spontaneously spun around on her tiptoes with a wide grin when she noticed that he was watching her.

“It’s still pretty new. The guys at the lab only finished implanting all the inner electrode work in my nerves and muscles eight months ago. The electrodes used to just be wrapped around the nerves but now they’re actually going directly through the nerve so that I can feel some sensation in certain spots in that leg. Mind controlled bionic limbs, man. I’ll happily learn to deal all the finicky coding issues with the microprocessors if I get to keep this fucking leg.”

“That’s amazing, Ozzy.” Joe really meant it, but he was struggling to shove enough genuine emotion into the words as Ozzy led the way into the solarium. “What do you want to know about my painting?”

“Nothing that you can’t tell me while you take a fifteen minute lay down in the chaise lounge. Or the couch, I’m not particularly fussy if you’re not.”

Joe managed to get the first protesting noise of complaint out before Ozzy skewered him with an amused stare. It was fairly similar to the one that Drew liked to direct at Samara whenever the blond man started half heartedly complaining about the hummingbirds that liked to occasionally rest on his upturned back when he was gardening. Or when he was sitting on Booker’s shoulders so that he could reach another spot to hang another hummingbird feeder, which usually happened directly after Samara got used as an avian park bench.

“Joe, I’m surrounded by stressed out nerdy academic and artistic types day in and day out who generally have to be forced into taking a nice quiet break by more sensible, caring individuals. You seem both academic and artistic, if not outrageously nerdy, so just lay down for a little bit and see if you feel better after that.”

Joe took one peek at the challenging glow in Ozzy’s eyes before he curled up on the tufted chaise lounge with a defeated sigh. It was gradually becoming clear with every minute that the descendents of the Al-Kaysani lineage were immovable mountains that weaker men would die trying to shift. They were also bossy little fuckers at times.

“I don’t think that you can complain about nerdy artistic academics with your career choice, what you want to go back to school for, and your employers.”

Ozzy let out a dryly amused snort as she curled up on the overstuffed armchair that was just inside of Joe’s eyeline. He closed his eyes for just a second as Ozzy murmured a retort.

“Oh sure, you start planning to go back to University to get your Masters in Art Restoration on part of the Smithsonian's dime and you’re suddenly a...” Joe drifted off to the soft sound of Ozzy’s voice and the whirring of her leg as she jiggled it over the side of the chair.

He floated back into wakefulness some time later on a much firmer and lumpier cushioned surface than the one he had fallen asleep on. It took Joe a few muzzy moments to identify the lumps as Nicky’s lap under his head, and Booker under his calves while he peacefully knitted away with the aluminum knitting needles that got replaced whenever the last pair got ruined in their use as an improvised weapon.

Nicky didn’t stop petting the back of his neck even as Joe gingerly rotated his head around the fading crink in his neck to see what Samara, Drew and Andy were doing on the couch that was only a few feet away from him.

The back of Samara’s head was pillowed on Andy’s thighs with his ass firmly planted in Drew’s lap while the other man held a deeply rumpled newspaper and a pen so that Andy could see it as the three of them quietly chatted with each other. Samara made a very satisfied sounding hum as Drew wrote down something on the newspaper after the three of them finally came to a consensus about something. Samara arched his head up into Andy’s idly stroking hand while he lazily scratched at the strawberry blond hair that was starting to thicken just below his belly button.

“Told you two that it would fit. Give us another one?”

“‘A ringing or tinkling sound.’ Sixteen letters, and the second letter is an ‘i’.”

“What was the last one?” Joe scrubbed a knuckle into his eye socket while he tiredly noted that Aello and Ozzy weren’t in the solarium. “Where’d your sisters go?”

“The official name of the fear of rainbows. Iridophobia, if you’re curious, and the two of them took my car to go shopping after breakfast. Jesus, that’s a fucking beast of a word. Andy, do you have any idea what it could be?” Joe felt the knot of anxiety loosen in his belly as Drew gnawed on the pen cap in lieu of mentioning Joe’s ducking out on breakfast.

Andy leveled a very thoughtful squint at the glass roof of the room.

“I can’t stand by my pronunciation of it, but I’m pretty sure that it’s tintinnabulation.”

Drew immediately leaned over and started counting the number of boxes that it would take up without any other signs of doubt in Andy’s knowledge. 

“Hey, it’s going to fit-” The rather generic sound of the mansion's door bell going off reached them with a slight echo. “Did Aunt Miri say that she was coming over today?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll go check it out. Lemme up, Andy.” Andy obligingly withdrew her hand from Samara’s rumpled hair. He gracefully rolled off of Drew’s lap and onto his feet before he enticingly shimmied his backside at Drew. “A little slappy to make Daddy happy?”

Joe smiled and rolled over so that he could shake his face against Nicky’s stomach as two loud slapping sounds sent Samara scrambling out of the room with a pleased squeak.

“That’s probably not a slogan that you’re going to find on a Father’s day card.” Joe grinned as he felt Nicky try to swallow down his giggles at his own joke while Booker despairingly groaned beneath his legs.

“You might find it on the very specialized ones, Nicky-”

“Get out here, guys!”

Joe was already scrambling off the chaise lounge with Nicky and Booker before Samara could finish his sentence, since absolutely nothing that wasn’t already horrifically urgent ever got bellowed in that completely serious tone by Samara.

It was a relatively short sprint to the still open front door, and Joe sucked in a hasty gasp of air once it was obvious that Samara wasn’t being drawn and quartered while they chit chatted in the solarium. Samara was standing in the driveway with two people as he wrapped them up in a painfully tight looking bear hug.

“I can’t believe the fucking stunt that you beautiful idiots pulled off. I swear that no amount of baby apple trees or bribes will stop me from dragging you both back by your motherfucking ankles if either of you ever try to pull that shit again.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” Joe’s heart hammered in his chest as he heard Nile’s trembling voice, which was barely audible as Samara fiercely smashed a protective kiss into Nile’s unbraided hair before he delivered another one to the other person in his arms. He met Nile’s wide eyes around the side of Samara’s head. “I’m right here, guys.”

Joe plastered himself around the trio without prompting on Nile’s behalf while Nicky, Booker, Andy and Drew piled onto the group hug. He wept into the top of Nile’s head out of almost painful relief and joy as the smell of sea water filled his nose. Drew wiggled between Nicky and Andy so that he could get his hands on the still ignored stranger in the core of the hug.

“Jesus, Quire, we missed you so fucking much. How many lives did you use up on that run?”

“Not as many as I would’ve given up to bring Nile home.” 

They had all heard that voice screaming around the water filling her lungs for centuries on end. Joe’s heart actually paused in his chest at the sound of her voice, and he very carefully moved his head to look at the woman who was comfortably mashed between Samara and Nile. She looked good. A little exhausted and pale looking in her black crop top and jeans, but good.

“Merry Christmas, Yusuf.” Quynh’s crimson mouth curled into a smile that quivered at the edges. “Did you miss me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, the unedited version of that song is my favourite Christmas song. I did have a lot of fun boffing it sideways, though. Happy Holidays, everybody! The appearance and capabilities of Ozzy's leg is a little fluffed up for the sci-fi of it all, and all my research was restricted solely to the internet, but the science of the electrodes through the intact nerves and muscles seem as decent as I could understand it, but I still think that it's mind blowing stuff.
> 
> All of your comments always make me squee loud enough to startle my cat, so feel free to comment if you liked this and put a little mild alarm into a perfectly lovely Ragdoll's life. 
> 
> The next chapter's POV is going to be a split between Nile and Booker.


	11. Home Again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out that Quynh isn't the worst person in the world to find your way home again with. There's plenty of very fun sexy times and cathartic hugging for everybody. (Except for Andy and Quynh, but they're still working their shit out together.) Joe desperately tries and fails to make friends with any bird that Samara has ever met.

None of Booker’s therapy sessions had ever felt like this. It was painful, horrifically honest, and it felt like he was willingly peeling away every bone, nerve, and muscle so that Samara could look at every sludge covered secret, lie and painful memory that had rotted away in the space that was securely tucked away under the peak of his sternum. It would’ve been unbearable if Samara wasn’t cauterizing his own pustulant inner wounds in a low murmur to him under the light of confession and the karaoke bar’s neon advertisement for three dollar beers on Friday nights.

Other people’s singing was a decent cover for the secrets that they were spilling to each other, and Andy’s purposely lazy sprawl at one end of the booth kept everybody else away as she slouched on guard for them. Samara now knew about Booker’s dead wife and sons, and he stayed supportively mute through Booker’s recounting of the last time that he had seen any of his family alive. Jean Pierre had been in terrified pain as the cancer ate away at his lungs, and Booker hadn’t been able to do anything for him besides fetching an unwanted glass of water at the end of it all. 

Samara’s biological parents had turned over custody of him to his paternal grandparents when he had turned ten years old. It hadn’t been like he had really seen all that much of them between attending boarding school in France and learning the tools of his future trade and inherited dynasty from his Mother and Father. 

Still, it had been a devastating shock when his passport, money, and housing in France had been ripped away from him at the age of thirteen when Samara refused to comply with the female gender that his grandparents tried to force him into, or break up with his girlfriend at the time. Samara was especially bitter and outraged about the lie that his grandparents had fed his parents at the start of Samara’s five year long homeless exile in Paris about why he was never coming home.

(‘Sorry, Love, but Samara died on a field trip to the beach at Dieppe, and they couldn't recover his body. Whoops! Faking my death! What a load of mediocre horse shit. No, Booker, if I’m going to die, it’s either going to be when I’m getting plowed up my ass by Drew or getting gutted in a bathtub. I shan’t settle for anything less than that.’)

Samara was angrier than Booker had ever seen him before and was a little drunk from his own wrath instead of the tiny sips of the lone beer that he was sharing with Booker. He really couldn’t blame him for that, or the disparaging comments about the soap operatic bullshit that his biological family indulged in.

Booker was just finishing up by filling Samara in on the monstrous boyfriend that had left him at the bottom of a landfill in more than one garbage bag. He hadn’t shared every tiny detail with him despite Samara’s less than delicate sensibilities, but Samara’s eyes were growing both wetter and frostier even as Booker choked out the last words he had to say.

“-And then I crawled out from the bottom of it. I think I scared a few birds on the way out.”

“Is he still alive?” Samara’s eyes were brittle ice shards that could’ve been formed in the bottom ring of Hell itself. The way that he was idly sucking a smear of bulgogi sauce off of his fingers did nothing to distract from the predatory consideration that was emulating from every inch of his body.

“No. It was the first thing that I took care of once I got my legs back under me again.”

“Good. I would’ve done the Thousand- No, Million Special for you if he wasn’t. For free, even.”

“That seems like a pretty drastic difference in price, Samara.”

“Not really. It’s in reference to the number of cuts that I’ll try to fit in.” Samara’s slowly growing smile was a truly awful thing in its genuine thoughtfulness. “You would be amazed how far you can get with some patience, arterial clamps, tourniquets, and a few anatomy textbooks.”

“Well, that's a terrifying thing to think about.” Samara paused for a moment before he wearily sighed in agreement and slumped a little further down into the booth. Booker cupped the fragile curve of the back of Samara’s skull in one of his hands as Samara’s head shake threatened to send him sliding off the side of Booker’s hip. The question that he had wanted to know the answer to since November slipped loose before he could stop it.

“What happened when you got drugged against your will for the first time?”

“Well, it wasn’t really a big surprise with the situation I was in when it happened.” Samara’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling as Booker splayed his fingers out across the rough band of scar tissue that encircled Samara’s neck and pulled up close to the other man’s jaw. “My new roommates threw me a party after I got hired as a waiter at Maman and Papa’s cafe. I was flirting a bit with a guy and a girl that showed up. Wasn’t really watching my drink.” Samara shakily exhaled while Booker tried not to clench his jaws from his quickly rising rage.

“Lost the plot after that. Kinda remember them telling me that no self respecting man would actually stick his cock in a guy with a pussy. At least that didn’t happen.” Samara’s joyless laugh got twisted into an almost muffled sob as tears welled up in his blankly staring eyes. “I still feel bad about yelling at Nicky last month about that bottle of wine that he brought home, though. Twenty fucking years after one little accident, and you’d think that I could get over seeing a guy with some random wine bottle in his hand. Nope. Freaking out at Nicky and Nile about things they don’t even know about. S-Such a fucking idiot.”

“You’re not. You’re really not.” Booker pulled Samara up into his lap so that the shorter man could hide his face in Booker’s neck as Samara’s broad back violently trembled under his hands. Andy was already fitting herself between Booker’s sprawled out legs so that she could supportively lean her back against Samara’s while her fingers fruitlessly flexed in her lap. “Nobody thinks that you’re stupid or to blame for what happened. Are they still alive?”

Samara was obviously shooting for and failing at achieving a blank flatness to his voice when he finally spoke again.

“No idea. I couldn’t even remember what they looked like when the seizures and the hallucinations from the drugs hit. My roommates didn’t know who they were. God, I hope Nile and- I hope she’s okay.”

None of them were aware of the fact that Quynh and Nile were just about to go through a very painful and unique regeneration just over eight thousand miles from them and six thousand and two hundred and fifty miles straight up from the Earth’s surface. At least Fiji was nice in late December.

It was admittedly less so when you were about to smack into it at a very high speed.

\--

Being dematerialized along with the jet, Max, and Quynh didn’t hurt nearly as much as she feared that it might. Quynh had just finished wrapping her blood slicked fingers around Nile’s when the world around them dissolved into nothing with a roar.

Well...not quite nothing.

Nile was aware of the fact that she no longer had a physical body to do anything with in the smoky twilight haze that she was floating in, but her...Soul? Consciousness? Stared at the galaxy of glowing gold and white stars that was surrounding her as she floated in place. Only six of the closest stars were a shining dark gold, and she basked in the warmth that she felt radiating out from them. All but two of them felt familiar as she pulled herself closer to them, and some part of her shuddered in ecstasy as she rubbed up against Booker’s slightly tattered soul. He felt so good. Sad, but good. Nile only allowed herself to drag up against his rough surface for a few more strokes before she forced herself to move on.

Quynh was the closest to her after Booker’s soul, and a wave of curiosity and comfort washed over Nile as she bumped up against her. The next one felt more both sweeter and more animalistic than either Quynh or Booker, and Nile flinched away from the howling despair and literally soul deep boredom/optimistism/rage/fear emulating from it. Him. Nile wasn’t sure why she was so certain about that one fact, but he certainly wasn’t Joe or Nicky. 

Her attention was abruptly caught by two stars that were just out of reach of the group’s orbit. They were so close to each other that Nile had initially thought that they were just a particularly large star. Their souls were steely gray with a very pale gold starting to brighten them in barely there streaks. 

The mystery of them was killing her. Nile strained to reach them through the pocket of space or purgatory that separated her from them. Almost there, almost-

Her atoms suddenly pulled themselves back together with an oddly familiar tugging sensation, and Nile got a split second to look around and almost get her bearings before her lungs seized in her chest from the complete lack of oxygen. She started tumbling downwards to the planet that she never thought that she would see from this angle outside of a photograph. 

Earth had been much prettier before she had started hurtling towards it at an ever increasing speed.

A strangled noise dragged her mind away from hysterically trying to identify which part of the planet that she was going to inevitably crash into. Quynh. Her face was already turning blue as she fought to close the small distance between them that had formed when they were regenerating.

Nile managed to flail her way across the few feet of air that was separating them, and triumphantly wrapped one of her hands around Quynh’s nearest wrist with a grip that she knew was too tight for comfort. Quynh’s wrist suddenly twisted in her vice like grip, and a wordless yell ripped out of Nile at the thought of losing Quynh. No, Quynh was just rotating her hand around so that she could hold onto Nile in turn- Oh God, it wasn’t just warm anymore, she was burning- 

Nile screamed as they simultaneously burst into flames while they rocketed downwards. She could smell herself burning as they left twin comet tails of greasy smoke behind them, and Nile only lived long enough to recognize and appreciate the fact that it looked like they were going to hit a rapidly growing coastline before comforting death took her again.

It was just Nile’s luck that she regenerated in time to find out what smacking into a sandy beach felt like after free falling from above the atmosphere. It was so much worse than the skyscraper. A wet burst of noise originated from what Nile thought was the broken remains of her torso instead of the scream that she was straining for. She was still on fire. Nile tried harder to scream.

A broken clicking sound came from the nearby water a moment later, and Nile thought that it might’ve been Quynh trying to say ‘Kid?’ Her eyes finally healed enough for her to see a little bit better, and she wept around the stench of her burning flesh and hair as she saw Quynh shakily stumble from the moonlit water like half of a steaming gore covered Valkyrie.

It only took a shambling step or two before Quynh reached her, and a feeble sound of pain slipped out of Nile as Quynh clumsily picked her up despite the flames and started carrying her back towards the water.

Quynh unceremoniously collapsed onto her back once they were a few feet into the sea water, and Nile hissed in relief as the warm water finally put out the flames. Quynh made a noise that could’ve been a hum of agreement, and Nile hid her face in Quynh’s blistered bare chest as the older woman rested her hand on the nape of Nile’s neck. 

Silence reigned for a minute or so as the two of them quietly listened to their own healing bodies and the gently lapping waves. Nile felt Quynh’s warped skin smooth and knit itself back together under her cheek as she mutely tried to figure out whether she was capable of speaking again. Nile hugged Quynh closer to herself as she summoned up enough saliva and bravery to break the verbal ice. 

“Nice tits.”

Quynh’s entire body shook with the force of her rasping laughter, and Nile grinned into the side of one of Quynh’s still healing breasts as she fondly stroked her hand over Nile’s quickly growing hair.

“Thanks. I think I’m still growing into them.” Quynh’s left nipple finished growing back with an almost inaudible popping noise as she spoke, and Nile hysterically howled with laughter while Quynh started gleefully snickering. Their giggles were still slowly dying off when Quynh finally asked an amusement stained question. “Seriously, though, how are you feeling?”

“Like I’ll never stop screaming if I open my mouth without thinking about it first.”

“That sounds about right. Eventually you’ll only scream internally.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Something slithered over the side of Nile’s foot in the water, and her scream had barely exited her mouth before Quynh snatched her up with much more ease than a few minutes ago and swiftly retreated with her over the beach and up to the treeline before she let Nile drop back onto her own feet. “What the fuck was that thing?!”

“I’m pretty sure that it was a Yellow-Lipped Sea Krait. Venomous sea snake.” Quynh kept talking in a deliberately soothing tone as Nile watched her swivel her head around to take note of the abandoned stretch of beach that they were on, the swaying treeline, and finally up to the now painfully mundane and familiar looking stars. “They usually keep to themselves if you don’t bother them. Really, they’re not any worse than Camel spiders. I think I know where we are.” Quynh squinted at a particularly knobby and windswept tree that stood out from the more flourishing trees scattered through the sand. “Actually, I’m positive that I know where we are.”

Nile hazarded a hesitant guess as she looked at the lush vegetation and the crystal clear water.

“Thailand?”

“No. Viti Levu. It’s home to Fiji's capital.” Quynh slowly turned in place as her dark eyes flickered from spot to spot like the pit viper that she had been described as. “It also has one of Samara and Drew’s Super Creepy Underground Storage And Murder Sheds buried about three hundred yards in that direction.” Quynh helpfully hooked her thumb over her shoulder in the indicated direction as Nile gaped at her. “It’s slightly less murder-y than I made it sound.”

A very cautious and uncomfortably exposed short hike confirmed that no, the buried 20 by 20 foot metal box that was completely hidden in a small hill was exactly as fucking creepy as Quynh had intially made it sound. Nile uneasily watched as Quynh pushed her eyelids apart so that the mold and mud smudged retinal scanner could get a decent look at her left eyeball. Nope, it was even creepier than that.

“Man, this is some straight up mother-fucking The Lovely Bones and Buffalo Bill bullshit.” The narrow hatch popped open with a quiet hiss of hydraulics, and Quynh nimbly dropped down into the box without any visible signs of hesitation. Nile was a little embarrassed to find that she was deeply relieved that Quynh hadn’t even bothered asking her if she wanted a tour of it. “Quynh?”

“I would’ve personally gone with a split between Saw and The Cabin In The Woods.” There were a few clanging and rustling noises before Quynh triumphantly huffed at something. “Isn’t The Lovely Bones the one with that Saoirse actor?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Nile shivered at the sudden wave of cold air that drifted out of the open hatch as she crouched down and tried to cover herself a little bit. Quynh had promised on the plane that they would talk about the events that had led to Quynh popping up out of nowhere with the exact tool needed for making sure that Max never got up again. They had the time to do it now, but Nile really wanted to not be frightened and naked when they talked about it. “What’s down there?”

“Preserved and shelf stable food. Some weapons. Bottled water annnd…” Quynh gleefully cackled at her next find. “A big bag of Drew’s weed. That might come in handy later. There’s also a spare trunk of clothing down here. Do you have any preferences in that department?”

“Do they have anything that’s kind of sporty?”

A pair of tennis shoes, panties, dark blue jeans and socks got thrown out of the hatch after a few thoughtful seconds. A plain black t-shirt and a neon colored track jacket quickly followed after it. The rich scent of real cedar and sage washed over her as Nile gratefully pulled on the borrowed clothes. Quynh finally emerged from the Murder Box in her own set of black jeans, a matching long sleeved crop top, and a tall pair of black leather boots with two jugs of purified water and a backpack of snacks before she dutifully re-locked and covered the hatch.

“You ready for a thirty minute walk, Nile? Drew and Samara keep an apartment in Nadi and we should be able to crash there until we can catch a flight back to LA.” 

Quynh’s voice was just as sympathetic and gentle as the first time that she pulled Nile out of trouble, and Nile stiffened her resolve as Quynh handed her one of the jugs of water. She refused to give into the howling inner voice that was pleading for her to curl up in a small ball on the ground and refuse to move until Quynh brought the guys and Andy to her so that Nile could constantly relive the horrifically traumatizing series of events that she had just gone through in relative peace. It sounded like a nice plan if she blanked out the stuff that would haunt her nightmares for years.

“Yeah, I’m good to go.”

Quynh cheerfully clapped her on the shoulder with a wide grin.

“Atta girl. Come on, we might even find some food and a bottle of liquor to kill before we have to tackle the Big Conversation if we hurry.”

\--

Quynh’s estimated time of arrival felt like it was accurate to within a few minutes, and Nile had been left to sit and numbly stare at the walls of Drew and Samara’s sterile and soulless Fijian apartment within an hour of colliding with the beach.

She wasn’t sure of how long Quynh had been gone in her hunt for a more substantial meal than the dried berries and jarred fish that they had scavenged and shared from Drew and Samara’s cache.

Nile was pretty sure that the older woman was supposed to come back soon.

Her hands started trembling heavily again, and Nile ruthlessly pinned them under her thighs to keep them from moving again. She wasn’t sure about what was happening in her head, but she really wished that her bizarre impulses would die down soon. It didn’t even make sense, but that stupid throw pillow in the chair across from her own was-

Fine. Normal. Vaguely taupe coloured.

Bland. 

Didn’t have a spark of either of Drew or Samara’s personalities in it. It didn’t have any personality at all, actually.

Nile wanted to gut it with a steak knife, and maybe even set it on fire afterwards.

She was horrified at the destructive urge scrabbling at the walls of her brain, and even recognizing that she was scrambling to find something even faintly familiar in this situation or to seize control over something wasn’t helping.

Nile was just getting out of her chair to reorganize one of their cabinets instead when Quynh quietly let herself back into the apartment in a cloud of deliciously aromatic steam that emulated from the sweating paper bag that she was carrying with one arm. Quynh’s dark eyes instantly pinned her in place with the force of her stare, which had a sea of ancient sadness and recognition floating near their surface. Nile half heartedly smiled back at Quynh’s tiny crooked smile.

“Hey, kid. Grab us some forks, would you?” Quynh swept past her on her way to the coffee table between the two armchairs with their food still in tow. There was a brief hesitation before she spoke again. “The mental and emotional fallout from these types of events will eventually get a bit better if you work at it. Could you grab some napkins, too? Not the cloth ones, though, I don’t want to run a load in the washing machine just for them.”

Nile carefully followed Quynh’s simple requests, and then she finally got to sit down in front of the take out containers which were full of coconut scented rice, steamed sweet potatoes and a lusciously spiced fish curry. There were two frost covered bottles of lime spiked ginger beer to go with it instead of the rum that Quynh had been sighing about on the last stretch into town. Nile hadn’t realized how hungry she was until she had the first forkful of delicious rice and fish in her mouth, and she lost herself in the peaceful ritual of sharing a meal with somebody and not exchanging any words except for appreciative comments about the food.

Quynh politely sat and laboured over a large piece of pastel coloured paper until Nile sat back in her seat with a full stomach and a satisfied whine before she finally said something beyond offering to eat Nile’s rejected flecks of cilantro for her.

“Would you rather talk about the Limbo that we were in first, or how I got out of the water?”

“Limbo, please.”

“You obviously figured out that the gold souls are those of our fellow immortals.” Nile meekly nodded at Quynh’s firm statement. “The white ones are not those of the human race.”

Quynh quickly elaborated when Nile immediately looked up at her in a mix of horror and awe.

“Sorry, they are human. They’re just not the entirety of the world’s population. I spent a lot of little flickers of time in that place when I was in the sea, and I’m pretty sure that they’re every possible immortal that will eventually come into being. It’s not like anybody has come along and told me differently yet, and it didn’t look like seven and a half billion souls rattling around in there.”

“It really, really didn’t look like that. What was with the two gray souls with the streaks of gold?”

“I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that they’re the next two people in line to become immortals. I don’t know what’s up with the gray colour, since both you and Booker’s souls were straight white before you two started turning gold. Any other theory that I have about them is just speculation.”

Quynh flicked her fingers and sent a complexly folded origami Millennium Falcon skittering across the coffee table and into Nile’s right hand. Nile gently cupped the unexpected gift to her chest while one side of Quynh’s mouth pulled up into a pleased smile.

“I think the main issue at hand is that there are seven of us currently active. There should only be six of us at my count.”

“The seventh one was male. He wasn’t Joe- Yusuf.” Nile hastily stumbled over the seldom used name as she attempted to correct herself for Quynh’s sake.

“Or Nicky, I know. Was he Sebastian?” Nile quickly shook her head as Quynh thoughtfully tilted her head. “Unless Andromache is exploring one of her other genders again…?” Nile’s shocked choking seemingly reassured the other woman. “That’s a no, then. Trust me, you’d notice otherwise.” Quynh wearily dragged both of her hands down over her face with a mournful sigh. “Have they told you about Lykon?”

“Yeah.” Nile twisted her fingers together as she stared down at her hands so that she could give Quynh some privacy in her age-old grief. “They said that he died his last death before Joe and Nicky were born.”

“He did. We waited a week to make sure that he wasn’t coming back before we cremated him. He was just the happiest, most annoying morning person that you’ve ever seen-” Quynh’s face threatened to crumple. “Gods, I miss him. I’ve missed everybody, but it’s not like I’m allowed to come home. Lykon is either in the afterlife or-”

Icy confusion washed over Nile at the matter of fact statement that Quynh had carelessly tossed into the middle of her explanation.

“What do you mean you’re not allowed to come home?”

Quynh looked as startled and indignant as a house cat that had accidentally slipped into a full bubble bath.

“Well, it’s not like they ever sent me a telegraph saying that, but it was pretty obvious that I somehow fucked up in their eyes after I got out. They could’ve at least sent me an email address so that I could’ve introduced myself to you first without being covered in other people’s squishy bits.”

“You’ve been out for a while?! Are we talking like a few days or a week or-”

“I’ve been out of the ocean for three hundred and seventeen years in February. How do you not know that? I’m not asking for an exact year count or anything from them, but it shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve been dreaming of me like I’ve been dreaming of you.”

Oh. Oh God, she really didn’t know.

“Quynh. Quynh, I’m so sorry, but the only visions that any of us ever see of you is when you were drowning in the bottom of the ocean. Nothing else. I’ve only ever felt you trying to claw your way out of that iron casket. Just drowning…and bleeding.”

Quynh was pale with newfound and age old horror as she numbly kept her wide eyes locked on Nile’s face like she was waiting for the sign of a lie to show up.

“T-That last part was on purpose. I kept bleeding enough to lure the sharks in. They finally bit the casket enough for me to get out.” Huge tears were rolling down Quynh’s stunned face as she spoke. “I’ve deliberately missed spending centuries with my family over a stupid misunderstanding on my part?”

Nile didn’t bother verbally confirming that fact for her, and instead wedged herself next to Quynh in her armchair so that the second oldest human on the planet could helplessly howl out her grief and self directed rage into Nile’s neck while they held onto each other. It took a long time before they both ran out of tears and pulled away from each other, and Quynh apologetically wiped at the mess that she had made on Nile’s neck and shoulder with a napkin while she quietly sniffled to herself.

“God, I can’t believe that I’ve been doing that to myself for so long.” Quynh flashed her a watery and forcefully rueful grin. “I’m pretty sure that I must’ve set the record for the longest sustained fuck up between the six of us. Can you pass me that laptop and the bag that I dug up out of the floor in the bedroom?”

“Booker might try to fight you on claiming the sustained fuck up medal, Quynh.” Nile obediently passed her the waxed canvas bag and reinforced laptop that Quynh had nonchalantly pulled out of the floor of Drew and Samara’s floor within minutes of getting into their apartment. Two pairs of massive boxy smoked glass sunglasses were the first to get pulled out of the bag before a fat stack of money and credit cards followed suit. Nile tamped down her curiosity about why Drew and Samara would bother to so carefully hide and store two wildly unfashionable sunglasses, and instead started rooting around in one of the cabinets to see if any of their tea wasn’t expired yet.

Quynh made a small sound of surprise just as Nile set the kettle on the stove top, and she immediately twisted around in time to see Quynh wincing at whatever the laptop screen was showing her.

“You know how we died on the Second of November?”

“Yeah, I’m keenly aware of that fact.” Quynh had a face that was almost as expressive as Jake’s, and Nile carefully watched her as Quynh’s face twisted around. “Is it the next day or something?”

“No. It’s the Twenty-Fourth of December, but we’re almost twenty-one hours ahead of LA in the time zone department.”

Nile shakily inhaled in shock. Weeks upon weeks of being dead, and it had felt like it had passed in a few minutes. Andy and the guys must’ve started losing their collective minds ages ago.

“Airline tickets and passports?”

“Working on it.” Quynh snapped her suddenly laser-like focus and lightning fast fingers back to the computer’s keyboard.

Nile reached for a tin of an oddly powdery beige loose leaf tea so that she could start measuring it out into the tea strainer. Quynh made a soft warning noise without looking up at Nile or what she was holding.

“I wouldn’t use that one unless you want to get really, really high off of Drew’s bubble hash.”

Nile thoughtfully considered the new information. Quynh merrily burst into laughter when she saw that Nile was hesitating over it.

Yeah, she could definitely get along with Quynh for the rest of her long life.

\--

“Will your partner want any refreshments for when she wakes up?”

The flight attendant’s perfectly professional question had more fond approval in it than the other attendant’s checking in question had, and Nile hastily blinked and looked up from where she was trying to sketch the striking profile of Nicky’s nose from memory. The busty blond attendant was smiling down at Nile and Quynh like they were cuter than a basket full of kittens, and her buttery Texan drawl was a soothing balm to Nile’s nerves, which honestly needed all the help that they could get as they reached the end of their ten hour flight.

“Umm, a bag of pretzels please? I think she’d also like a ginger ale too, if that’s possible.”

Nile thought that she could feel Quynh’s unseen lips quirk up in a small smile from where she was nuzzling her face into Nile’s nearest shoulder. Wait a second. 

The back of Quynh’s head and part of her face were mostly obscured by her hair and the slouchy black toque that she had apparently pulled out of thin air with the same kind of magic that had gotten both of them passports, tickets, and their asses on a plane with enough luggage that it wouldn’t make border agents suspicious in the tight little span of five hours. She was also cuddling up to Nile like someone was paying her a boatload of money to do it, and Nile was suddenly aware of what they looked like. Namely, a cute little lesbian couple that were acting deeply affectionate and handsy on a flight back from one of the most romantic destinations on the planet.

“Will do, darling.” The bright eyed blond quirked her head with a genuinely warm smile as she deftly handed over Nile’s requested snacks. “You know, it’s always so nice to see a sweet pair of girls like the two of you on one of my flights. Warms the cockles of my heart.” She boldly winked at Nile as she started turning away. “It also reminds me of my girl Jenna back in Nashville. Y’all have a happy holiday, now.”

“You too.” Nile blinked at the back of the seat in front of her for a moment or two while the flight attendant- ‘Bridget’, actually, if her name tag was accurate, gave her another wink and an almost maternal shoulder pat before she moved off with her snack cart. Nile wasn’t sure if she had ever met a more Bridget-y Bridget than her. She would’ve happily placed a bet with Nicky and Booker that Bridget had pom-poms and a cheerleading outfit in her slightly distant past if they had been on the plane with them. “Are you done playing possum yet?”

“Maybe.” Quynh’s admittedly exhausted looking smile widened a little bit as she looked up at her with a cracked open eye. “I think I’d be swinging for the fences if I tried to date you, though. I’d really hate to get in a dick waving competition with Sebastien, Joe and Nicky over you. Well, not OVER you, but in your general vicinity.”

“Jesus, did the three of them put out an announcement on the tv about the four of us dating, or what? A little website devoted to it, maybe?”

“No, but Drew and Samara have both spent a fair part of their careers in intelligence gathering and rumour mill surveillance. The boys do seem very proud of you, though. ‘A strutting pack of puffed up tom cats with one lioness.’ was Drew’s exact description of them when they started talking about you.” Nile hid both her squeak and the scorching heat of her blush in her balled up jacket while Quynh patted her back with a pleased grin. “Drew can be very descriptive when they feel like it. It could be worse, though. Samara threw himself a gender announcement press conference while we were dead. It apparently went viral on the internet.” 

“Is he really famous enough to warrant a press conference for that?”

“Well, he is very photogenic, and he has enough resources to buy out half of the United Kingdom if he really wanted to.” A much softer smile warmed Quynh’s face as she spoke. “He’s also an outrageous flirt with the press. Do you want to see the video?”

Nile did, and she felt a painful ball of anxiety start to form under her ribs anew as she watched his smoothly delivered speech. She couldn’t help but compare Samara to Merrick, and the bright eyed blond with the hidden patches of scar tissue and a bubbly personality was starting to look like the much more dangerous one of the two.

Sure, Merrick had a similar status in life to Samara, and all the money and business savvy that the other man had, but he had been severely lacking in a few things that Samara had in spades. Charisma. Talent. Looks. An enormous set of metaphorical balls.

Nile was sure that if Samara had ever had Nicky, Joe, Andy and Booker under his thumb in the same scenario that Merrick had been in, he wouldn’t have naffled around trying to intimidate them with badly applied Shakespeare quotes and solely relying on a personal army as a human shield and catch all enforcement. No, he would’ve taken them very seriously indeed.

Nile had drugged and probably earned the ire of the human shaped jaguar who had a sharply tailored plaid suit and sharper teeth. The jaguar who was boldly telling the whole world that they could pound it up their asses if they had a problem with him being transgender in a charmingly put speech that obviously had influences of her fellow immortals in it. The jaguar who had put his life on the line to try and save Nile’s life numerous times with little in return for it. The jaguar that Quynh trusted her secrets, pet, and houseplants with.

A volcano of metallic pink, blue and white confetti exploded on screen while a clearly proud Samara radiated happiness like a supernova.

God, Nile was so fucked.

“He’s not going to be as mad as you think he’ll be.” Quynh correctly predicted the track that Nile’s mind was hurtling down as she quickly flicked through to another tab on the laptop. Nile squinted at the new page, which seemed to be advertising a small plant nursery that seemed to deal in as much rustic charm as plants. “Do you want to chip in on their Winter Holiday presents? Finicky heritage apple trees might help you with getting back in their good books if our prolonged absence hasn’t done it already.”

If there was anybody who would know what bribes Drew and Samara would be interested in, it would be Quynh. Nile obediently rattled off the group credit card information that Nicky had forced her to memorize a mere week after Merrick.  
\--

“No, no, I can just wait out by the end of the driveway. You can just yell when it’s safe to come out and I’ll-” 

All of Quynh’s sleek muscles came into play as Nile reluctantly gave up on fleeing while the other woman firmly brought her to a stop by twining her arm around Nile’s. She had been way more encouraged by Quynh’s pep talk on the plane before she had come face to face with Drew and Samara’s front door. Nile knew that Samara or Drew probably weren’t going to shoot her with a shotgun the second that they saw her, and neither of them had been crass or angry enough to yell at Nile through the piss poor drugging decision and the fiasco at the airport.

The nauseating combination of shame and fear in her belly wasn’t exactly listening to reason, though. Quynh pulled her even closer to herself, and Nile nervously kneaded her fingers into Quynh’s forearm as they moved closer to the prominently displayed doorbell. Nile barely managed to muster up a feeble smile as she read the couple’s well loved doormat, which told any potential visitors to ‘Come Back With A Warrant.’

“You’re not running away from this, Nile.”

Nile jabbed at the doorbell before she could over think it even more, and a small chorus of unseen dogs started barking in the fenced off backyard at the echoing sound of the doorbell.

“Coming, Pet! Just give me a second to get there.” 

The yelling man certainly had Samara’s crisp Off To Have Tea With The Queen accent, but his voice was considerably deeper than the last time that Nile had heard Samara. She only had time to share a quizzical frown with Quynh before the front door got ripped open so that her biggest anxiety and current worst nightmare could stick his tousled head of blond hair outside.

“Sorry, I was just in the middle of something-” 

Samara finally noticed the both of them, and Nile froze in place as his narrowing eyes focused on her. Her brain hastily started noticing all the little details that she could spot in his appearance just in case Samara pulled a weapon. Granted, there weren't too many spots under his twisted up black t-shirt where weapons could be hidden, and there was clearly nothing on his wide band of bared midriff beyond the occasional coppery freckle and a surprising amount of scars in various stages of healing.

His tangerine coloured floor length skirt with its dangerously high slits was an entirely different beast, though. Samara deliberately shifted his weight from one pale foot to the other, and Nile felt her mouth going inexplicably dry as the whole garment threatened to slide right off of Samara’s hips. Okay, clearly her stress smashed libido was coming back online, even if she didn’t have any interest in Samara beyond not pissing him off more than she already had. 

“-Hi.”

“I really like your skirt.”

“Thank you. It’s got pockets. I-” Samara suddenly sniffled mid-sentence, and Nile hastily looked back up at Samara’s bruised face while it crumpled in on itself with a flood of happy tears. “Holy shit, I didn’t know if you two were going to actually come back from that. Can I give you guys a hug?”

Samara turned out to be a great hugger, and he even smelled phenomenal to boot. Nile got to appreciate all his surprisingly burly muscles and his car load of blond hair that miraculously didn’t end up getting shoved in her face for a little bit before Quynh threw the moment out the window by wishing Joe a merry Christmas.

\--

Booker was trying very hard to remember that he trusted Samara on a level that was on par with his fellow immortals. Drew was blatantly trickier and sneakier than his fiance, and he kept most of his cards close to his chest in a way that Samara didn’t. He would trust Drew to save Andy’s life and a couple hundred civilians in one easy swoop. On the other hand, he would happily let Samara lead him around any hostile environment while Booker was naked, blind, deaf and mute.

Booker was very focused on trying to sensibly cope with the fact that Samara and Drew knew perfectly well who and what Quynh was, and that they had kept any information about their BFF from the whole group. 

Nile was miserably tensing up in the crook of his spread legs as Andy kept yelling at Drew and Samara, and her hunching shoulders and Joe’s distressed body language were the only things keeping Booker from trying to yell Andy down himself.

Nicky was sitting on the coffee table in front of them while he acted as a physical barrier from the three people clustered together on the opposing couch. Andy was on Joe’s other side while she murderously glared at the two mortals like she was trying to rip their heads apart with thought alone. Booker suspected that their physical positions in regards to Quynh had a fair amount to do with it, even with all of the secret keeping they had been doing.

Samara. Was. Braiding. Quynh’s. Hair.

Drew was protectively curled up in Quynh’s lap, but it was Samara alone who was making Booker desperately reel in the semi-hysterical urge to giggle from the stress building up in the room. Samara was perched on the arm rest behind Quynh’s back with a canister of expensive looking hairspray jammed in place under his armpit, a hair comb that was haphazardly shoved into his own messily done up hair, and a dozen silver bobby pins that were sticking out from between his pursed lips.

He was also carefully ignoring Andy’s blistering stare while his long fingers skillfully manipulated Quynh’s long black hair into a towering crown of fishtail braids. Booker would’ve teased him about not going for French braids if Samara hadn’t been fixated on his work with eyes that were getting more and more bloodshot as Andy spat centuries of grief and venomous anger at him and Drew.

Booker strained to reach Andy’s shoulder around Joe’s back while the older man tried to coax her down from her wrathful perch with Nicky and Nile’s help.

“Andy, please don’t do this. They were only doing it for Quynh’s-”

“Maybe they were doing it for her sake, but they still should’ve reported in to me-”

“We are NOT two of your immortals to scold and command, Andromache!”

Booker should’ve been keeping a closer eye on Drew. He had already rocketed to his feet by the time he finished spitting out the increasingly accented words, and Drew looked like a enraged mongoose that was figuring out the best way to kill and eat a king cobra as he loomed over Andy with every inch of height that he had.

“Centuries. Quynh was alone and in pain for centuries while you went off to save the world, Andy. Why should we have told you a fucking thing about her? You clearly need to be reminded that Samara and I have both upheld our oath to keep Quynh’s secrets from the world, and we would sooner cut out our tongues than expose you and everybody else.” Andy wasn’t quite sinking back into the cushions as Drew leaned over her, but she certainly wasn’t moving forward as Drew’s eyes lit up with a fiery glow while the almost invisible surgical scars in his hairline paled against his dark skin. “She has been one of our best friends for a third of our lives, so I need you to crawl out of our asses and get the FUCK over it.” 

“Were the three of you fuck-”

“You might want to think very carefully about whether you actually want that question answered, Andromache.”

Quynh’s voice was much mellower than Drew’s facial expression as he dropped back into his seat with a still infuriated click of his teeth, and Booker looked to Samara for an answer to Andy’s cut off question while Samara finished up with Quynh’s hair. Samara’s damp eyes met his own for a moment before they flickered over to Drew and Quynh. There was a nod so small that Booker wouldn’t have seen it if he wasn’t watching Samara so closely. The three of them had fucked each other. One side of his mouth pulled up into an irrepressible pleased smile for a moment or two, and Booker felt his face burn with the force of his blush as he understood the second part of Samara’s unspoken message. Their experience (or experiences) together had been very good.

The sudden hiss of Samara’s can of hairspray neatly snapped the tension filled silence in half.

“Well, I think we’ve just about settled that unless you two want to frighten Nile some more.” Drew and Andy guiltily recoiled even further away from each other at Samara’s mild words, and Booker hugged Nile closer to his chest while the corners of Samara’s mouth twitched upwards. “Besides, I’m not really seeing a downside to it if Andy really wanted to be in our asses, Babe.”

Drew slowly grinned at Samara’s bone dry quip, and Booker smiled as he felt Nile slowly exhale from relief at the same time as Joe and Nicky.

“It’s certainly true that it would be an honor and a privilege if she tried to harpoon our salty longshoremen, English. Or navigate our forested chasms with her heat seeking moisture missile, but you know that I’m not particularly fussy about which one of those I’m doing.” Samara seemed to be hiding his blushing face in his hand more from the fond nickname rather than the raunchy euphemisms that Drew was drawling as he regretfully looked at Andy. “I’m sorry about swearing at you, Andy.”

“I’m sorry about blaming and yelling at you two.” Andy thoughtfully hummed before she spoke again, and Booker preemptively hid his face between Nile’s shoulderblades as Samara groaned in dread. “I think that an orgy would probably be the most efficient way to go about it if you’re working your way through the immortals.” Andy had obviously noticed Samara’s earlier nod, and the mischievous spark in her eyes brightened while Samara looked like he wanted the Earth to open up around him and get him out of the conversation. “It used to be very traditional at this time of year. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

Samara and Drew made two different mumbling noises, which sounded flattered, embarrassed and flustered all at the same time. Booker thought he heard the phrase ‘She’s just a baby!’ somewhere in there. The ‘Baby’ quickly figured out who they were talking about, and Booker wolfishly grinned back at Nile as she silently mouthed a song title at him. 

Well, maybe a song title and a compliment.

It only took one slightly off-key verse of ‘You Sexy Thing’ before Samara whipped a throw pillow at his head with the incredibly accurate aim of the truly embarrassed. Booker barely felt the sting through the blissful rush that a laughing, safe, and within arm’s reach Nile brought him.

\--

“You’re so beautiful, Nile.”

Booker’s warm praise came out in a gravelly rumble that made his midriff vibrate between Nile’s legs, and she had to bite her lower lip as his muscled stomach rubbed up against the achy spot hidden inside her panties. She had gotten hopelessly lost coming back from the quest room that Samara had insisted on her having just in case she didn’t feel like rooming with the guys. Booker had managed to find her within a few minutes, and had offered to show her his seldomly used room and the absurdly large bed in Joe and Nicky’s shared room.

One thing had quickly led to another, and Nile had eventually managed to pin Booker down and straddle his waist through a slow flurry of lazy kisses while he sprawled out on Nicky and Joe’s marriage bed like a particularly delighted and loose limbed cat. All of the warm and enticing feelings from the last time that they were together like this were rushing back now that there wasn’t any obvious danger hanging over their heads, and his easily given praise was only warming her up even faster.

“You’re beautiful, too, Booker.” Nile was sure that Booker would’ve cringed away from receiving that compliment just a few months ago, but he quickly flashed her a bashful smile as he pressed a shy thank you to her neck.

“I’m so glad that you got back to us safely.” Nile made a noise that was closer to a whimper than anything else, and she shivered heavily as Booker grinned against her neck before gently nipping at her lower lip. “We missed you so much. I don’t think there was a minute in a day that the three of us weren’t thinking about you.” 

Booker gracefully rolled himself up against her most intimate parts with a move that Nile thought she might’ve seen once in a yoga video, and she helplessly kneaded her fingers into his wide shoulders with a squirmy little sigh.

“We’ve also been trying to perfect a Chicago Italian Beef sandwich for you. Nicky keeps trying to jam up the works, though. Literally. Even we know that there’s not supposed to be mint jam in there, but he keeps trying to sneak it in-”

Nile kissed him even as happy tears welled up in her eyes. Safe. She was finally safe. He hummed against her mouth while he pulled her closer into a hug with a comforting sweep of his hands over her back. Nile basked in the comfortable silence for a few moments before she heard Nicky and Joe putting an inhuman amount of effort into making sure that she and Booker could hear them coming down the hallway outside their room. She finally had all three of them to herself. Joe softly murmured something to Nicky, and an electric frisson of nervous anticipation and excitement rocketed up her spine. 

It was obvious that the three of them had done way more with each other than some relatively innocent kissing in a stairway just from watching the way that they were acting around each other. And yes, she still had a persistent little knot of insecurity lurking in her chest about that, but all of their actions since she had gotten home had informed her that yes, she was definitely wanted by all of them even with how far they had gotten with each other.

She was very, very sure about that. Nile allowed herself a deeply satisfied smile at the recent memories of her experiences with that. Joe had taken his sweet time in kissing her neck while he leisurely kneaded at her ass under the tissue thin excuse of getting cat fur off of the back of her jeans mere seconds after Quynh had dragged Andy out for a last minute gift buying spree. Nicky had done his best to top that by pinning her against one of the kitchen counters for a blistering make out session that had ended with his t-shirt getting helplessly lost after being ripped off of him with a growl and her breasts being lovingly tormented by his viciously skilled hands through the thin material of her shirt.

Drew or Samara must’ve overheard them at some point or another, but they hadn’t interrupted them. They clearly weren't judging them either, since she had found Nicky’s recently lost shirt hanging on a coat hook in the outer hallway shortly afterwards while Nicky blushed and grinned at her. There had also been a new blown glass dish filled with sample sized packets of lube and condoms on prominent display in the kitchen when Nile had passed through the room again. She would’ve been a little embarrassed by Drew and Samara’s blatant safe sex encouragement if she hadn’t have implusively peeked at the brands up for offer after a flustered moment or two. They had clearly sprung for the expensive shit, and Nile had grabbed a handful of the foil wrapped packets of lube before she could get a chance to get all squirmy about it. 

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Nile lazily combed her fingers through Booker’s hair while he softly told them to come in. There was a small scuffling noise before Nicky and Joe both paused outside the door. Joe audibly sighed a moment later.

“You’ve got to put your tray down and get the door, Nicky.” Nicky made an inaudible protesting noise in response. “I can’t get it, and I’m not going to turn around and tell Samara that I broke his Great-Babushka’s bone china because I tried to open the door with my foot.”

“I really hate to tell you this, my everlasting delight, but I am not going to put the food down on the floor.” Nicky sounded both pained and exasperated as he firmly responded to Joe. “Mister Missile Launcher clearly has evil intentions in his heart, and he’s going to snarf all of the prawns and clotted cream if this platter gets below shin height. Are you going to be the person who tells him that he’s a bad cat for doing that?” There was a long feline yowl that spoke of unending sadness and crocodile tears. “I’m sorry, Mister, I didn’t mean it.”

“He did mean it, Mister. He’s a bad, bad man who deserves to have his shoe insoles buried in your litter box.” 

Booker was helplessly shaking in a bout of silent laughter underneath her as they listened to Joe and Nicky’s conversation, and Nile had to bite back some giggles of her own as she climbed off of him with a quick pinch to his ass. Joe’s next murmur was a little more desperate as he switched into a higher gear of bargaining.

“Nicky, I swear that I’ll give you a very nice blow job as soon as I can if you just put the tray down and open the door.”

Nile obligingly pulled open the bedroom door with a wide grin.

“Is that blow job offer still on the table, Joe? I mean, I am the one who opened the door for you-” Her lecherous leer slipped a little as she caught sight of the two enormous silver platters that Joe and Nicky were carrying. Mister promptly slithered past her ankle as he launched himself at Booker. “What do you guys have there?”

Joe’s big doe eyes were already darkening with a very inspired heat above his growing smile as Nile looked up from the full tea service that he was carrying with both hands.

“You just tell me when and where you want me to do that, and I’ll make it happen, Nile.” Joe’s hands might’ve been fully occupied, but he still made heat surge in her chest and between her legs as he stretched over the delicate looking cups and teapot to give her a very thorough kiss. “I hope that you’re thirsty. Bae.” 

His smile widened into a sunny grin while she helplessly started to cackle at hearing that exact sequence of words come out of his mouth, and he cheekily winked at her as he slipped past her with Nicky close behind him.

“Don’t worry, nobody will get to see my thirst traps besides you three. Booker, you’re never going to get the cat fur out of your beard if you keep doing that.” Booker kept loudly motorboating Mister’s furry belly while the cat blissfully kneaded away at his scalp. Nile shared a wryly amused smile with Nicky as an odd tingle of envy twitched in her stomach. It wasn’t like she had ever been particularly into it, but Nile still felt like she should’ve gotten dibs over a cat for getting motorboated by her boyfriends.

“Joe’s immortalized all my thirst leg traps in his sketchbooks, if that helps any.” Nile obligingly tipped her head up for Nicky’s quick kiss, and she smiled up at him as he gently swept the tip of his bent elbow up her back while he moved past her with a carefully arranged platter of delicate looking snacks. “Drew said that he found my shirt behind the stove. Should we aim for the top of the fridge next time?”

Nile hid her embarrassed but pleased smile in her palm as Nicky teased her with a crooked grin. They had both gotten pretty enthusiastic about it by the time that she had successfully helped Nicky with pulling his shirt off, and she had been a little too vigorous with getting it away from them once it was off.

“Maybe we should just avoid aiming for electronic appliances entirely. You’re also using the term thirst traps wrong.”

“No, Bellissima, I was using it in both senses of the term.” Nile contently smiled at him as he paused long enough to tap his cheek against her own before he set the tray down on the ottoman that was at the foot of the bed. “We made you an English Afternoon Tea service as a warm up for your Christmas presents. We weren’t sure if you had ever gotten to try it before, and we thought that you might have fun if we pulled it together for you.”

“Are you guys trying to romance me?”

“Trying to?” Nile was only teasing them a little bit, but Nicky and Joe both looked deeply aghast as they stopped to look up at her. Booker winked at her as the massive gray cat tried to curl up on his neck like the heaviest scarf in the world. “I’m sorry, Nile, we really were trying our best-”

“To be fair, both of your initial romantic endeavors started with stabbing each other. Have you considered jabbing her with a very sharp tooth-pick yet? That’d be a nice familiar baby step-” Booker’s next muffled words still sounded deeply amused even as Joe’s playful smothering attempt with a pillow sent the cat skittering off his chest and out of the bedroom with an alarmed hiss. “G’of. Leder.” 

“You still have that? What have you two been doing this whole time?” Joe let Booker out from his pillowy prison with an affectionate kiss while Booker tried to breathlessly reorganize himself. 

“Getting some long overdue kissing in, actually.” Nile dropped her head back against Joe’s steady shoulder as she watched Nicky fastidiously fuss over the food tray arrangement. “Definitely not carving lotus flowers and roses out of radishes and strawberries, though. Very nice work, guys.”

“Nicky does love it when he gets a chance to bust out his paring knives, my little Peach.” Nile felt the blood drain out of her face as she realized that Nicky might’ve had a hand in the creation of the teeny tiny finger sandwiches that were neatly clustered at one end of the tray. 

“Don’t worry, we made Nicky stick to just making the scones and decorating. He can’t be as...creative when he has to bake.” Nicky speared Joe with a pointed glare for his choice of words. Joe quickly blew him a kiss in return, which didn’t really stop Nicky from looking like a disgruntled and heavily rumpled raccoon that was overhearing smack talk about his cooking abilities. “Love you, Habibi. Booker made the cookies and I handled the sandwiches. Sa-” Joe started to say a name before he shut his mouth with a worried looking click.

It didn’t take much to put the pieces together.

“Samara made the tea?” Booker nodded firmly, and Nile took another look at the temporarily abandoned tea tray. A joke about attempted poisoning attempts evaporated on her tongue. Samara had clearly used the finest china that he had on hand, and the rich chestnut smell of the brewed tea beckoned to her with a tempting hint of a fruit that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was clear that it had been put together with just as much care as it would’ve been if Samara had made it for Drew. “I guess you can take the Englishman out of England, but you can’t take the love of tea out of him.”

Booker softly smiled at her while the faint worry lines around his eyes relaxed as he pulled out a wide greeting card and a fat sheath of paperwork from his back pocket before he gently placed it all in her hand.

“Samara also has a pretty decent chunk of Russian in him from his mother’s side, so he’s getting it from there, too. He really didn’t want to scare you off with the samovar, though.” Nile quietly accepted the expensively thick vanilla coloured card that had ‘Merry Christmas’ elegantly written on the front of it in dark green ink, and she shakily squeezed his fingers for support as she looked down at it. “Drew and Samara wanted me to give this to you.”

Nile hesitantly flicked it open with her thumb before she started reading it out loud so that everybody’s obvious curiosity could be satisfied. Her heart immediately started swelling with relief and a quiet joy at the message set down in a painstakingly formed copperplate cursive.

It mostly boiled down to; We forgive you. No, really, we do. Don’t do it again, or we reserve the right to drag your immortal ass up and down the neighborhood. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. We might take you dancing as punishment. We hope you have a nice Christmas, and you don’t have to take anything to the potluck tomorrow if you don’t want to. Please stop looking so nervous around us, you’re giving us indigestion. Read through this scholarship application if you really want to make it up to us. Lots of love with a lingering sense of faint irritation, S.H and D.A.

Nicky finally broke the content silence with an unhurried kiss to her cheek.

“Are you thinking about going to University, Nile?”

Her Dad would’ve wanted her to. Jake would want her to, just by being the only member of her family who knew she was still alive. She had wanted to go to one through every sand plastered and miserably overheated moment of her military career. Even Drew and Samara wanted her to go, and she was pretty sure that they wouldn’t have known her from a random cashier at Whole Foods if she hadn’t been waist deep in a shitty situation while being Cougar’s semi-sister in law.

“Maybe. I’m not sure yet.” Somebody was rubbing the small of her back with the perfect amount of pressure for the muscles that still felt pinched after her long plane ride. She flashed a quick smile at the guys as they thoughtfully watched her. “Should we get this tea party on the road?”

“Of course we can. I think I can hear Samara’s ancestors wailing in despair over it being called a tea party, though.” Nile playfully squirmed away from Booker’s scratchy jaw with a giggle as he nosed his way up under the hem of her t-shirt. His next words were slightly muffled as he spoke, and she arched up into the slight weight of his mouth as she felt him map out a few of her stretch marks with his lips. “No, no, I’m really serious about that. You might just hear them if you listen very carefully, sweetheart.”

“Acccccch, my four leafed clovers are withering in the fiiiiields from the disrespect shown here todaaaay!”

“Da. Very sad.”

Joe’s Irish accent seemed to be veering straight into a Lucky Charms commercial, and Nicky’s Russian impression was a little murky as his own accent bled into it, but Nile couldn’t think of anywhere she would rather be than with the three of them as they each tried to be the first person to bring her a snack and a cup of tea.

\--

“Y’know, I’m pretty sure that I died in two ways that none of you guys have.”

Joe’s limber fingers paused for a moment from their relentless quest to massage out every pain she had ever felt in her feet at her announcement. She could easily feel the tension twisting upwards through Booker’s chest as she leaned her back against him, and Nicky was looking up at her with his sharply focused sea-green eyes as he ignored the mangled little mess of cookies that he was trying to sandwich together. Nicky finally broke the silence.

“We’ve died in many, many ways, Amore. How can you top us all?” Booker made a thoughtful noise behind her that made her cheeks burn as Nicky wolfishly grinned at his own double entendre. “I didn’t really mean it that way, but I certainly wouldn’t complain about you trying it out if you wanted to, Nile. What’s the new fangled ways of dying that you came up with?”

“Suffocating in the cold vacuum of space, and burning up in reentry through the upper atmosphere. Hitting the beach afterwards wasn’t fun either.”

Joe and Booker appreciatively whistled even as they winced at the thought. Nicky hid his face in his hands while he despairingly shook his head.

“Santa Maria. Yes, that’s two new ways to go about it, Polpetta. Andy’s going to be frothing at the mouth when she finds out that you broke her imaginative deaths record.” Nicky abandoned his snack entirely, and Nile tried not to shiver as he and Joe curled up against her sides. Booker’s slowly stroking fingers were making her skin tingle as he lazily petted her just above the hemline of her jeans. Fuck. She wasn’t even sure if he was aware of what he was doing to her, but both Nicky and Joe were watching Booker’s hands with a predatory air of interest. “Was the view decent before the suffocation kicked in?”

“Mm. It was fine. I-” Nile came to a whimpering stop as Booker mouthed a gentle bite into the base of her neck before he soothed the now electrified spot with an indulgent kiss. “Fuck. Wait, Babe, just gimme a second.” Booker obediently pulled his head away from her neck with a curious but pleased hum. “I need to know what I’m getting into. What did the three of you get up to with each other while I was gone?”

She wasn’t angry about the three of them getting intimately acquainted with each other while she was missing in action, but she was deeply curious and a little worried about how much she might have to catch up with. Joe easily met her eyes, and she exhaled in relief as a soft smile bloomed across his face while he gently caught one of her trembling hands between his own.

“Booker rubbed one out against my back when Nicky was giving me a blow job.” Nile quivered as Joe delicately pressed a kiss into her captured palm while he calmly laid the facts out. “Nicky came on Booker’s face after that.”

“Booker gave me a hand with fingering Joe open so that I could fuck him.” Nile shakily exhaled as Nicky gave her the same intensely fond look as the first time that she managed to knock him on his ass in sword training. He closed his eyes and tilted his head into her hand while she cupped his cheek with her free hand. “I also slipped him a little taste of Joe’s pre-cum with my mouth. He’s not quite up for blow jobs yet.”

“I might be ready for it soon.” Booker was nervously plucking at the fabric of his jeans, and Nile rolled her head around so that she could fit her face in the safe spot just below his jaw. “Joe climaxed in me when I asked him to.” He swallowed with an audible click. “Nicky also rimmed me afterwards. To- You know, clean up the mess a certain somebody left behind in me. That’s everything we did together. I promise.”

Huh. That was a little less than she had expected. A wave of reassurance washed over her for having it all laid out in such straightforward facts and descriptions. She squirmed around a little in her dampening panties as she imagined what they had looked like when they were doing all of those things together.

“Thank you for telling me all that. I-” She nervously licked her lips as Joe and Nicky looked up at her while she shifted a little against Booker’s erection as it rubbed up against her ass. “I haven’t had an orgasm since the night we spent together. I don’t want to have pentrative sex yet, but I- You know, it would be nice if…”

“Do you want a hand with getting off, sweet girl?” Booker’s voice was rapidly descending into a deeper rumble than usual, and she quickly nodded in agreement before she remembered that Booker liked it better when she said these things out loud.

“Yes, please.” She restlessly squirmed as Nicky and Joe relentlessly watched her with ever darkening eyes.

“Do you want our mouths to get in on it too?” Nile pleadingly whined as Booker softly kissed the shell of her ear. “You won’t believe how good they are with their mouths, love. I think they’ve been daydreaming about getting to suck on your luscious little tits for months now. I certainly have.” Her panties were feeling distinctly uncomfortable now, and she had to choke down a moan as their eyes flickered down to her clothed chest and...further down her body.

“Definitely. I’d love that. Kinda want to save Joe’s promise to eat me out for another day, though.”

It turned out that Joe’s joyful puppy dog expression could still show up even when it looked like he wanted to fuck her twenty-one different ways to Sunday. He pushed himself upright enough for a very sweet kiss before he soothingly murmured to her,

“Don’t worry, we won’t lick your lovely vagina until you want us to.”

“I wouldn’t say no to the general vicinity, though.” Booker was practically purring at her amendment to that while Joe flashed his trademark mega-watt grin at her, and Nicky looked like a very pleased wolf who was trying to figure out the best way to eat her up in little bites. “I’m not sure how naked you guys want to be, but my jeans have been grinding sand into my skin since fucking Fiji, and I really want to take them off.” Nicky’s vulpine grin widened enough to show off a twin set of dearly missed dimples.

“I’d be happy to match you for whichever pieces of clothing you take off, Nile.”

“That kinda sounds like a dare, Nicky. Am I going to end up streaking through the Kremlin and Red Square like poor Booker?”

“He loved it once he got back into his parka.”

“And my fucking boots. I couldn’t feel my feet!”

“Well, you should’ve had plenty of practice with freezing in Russia at that point-”

Joe flashed her a warm smile as Nicky and Booker lightheartedly teased and bickered with each other, and Nile grinned back at him as she felt the imminent sexual tension ease off a little while he stroked his hands over her lower legs with a gratifying expression of flattering awe.

“They’ll eventually remember what we were up to. Do you want a hand with getting your jeans off?”

Drew’s jeans were even less forgiving to wear than Samara’s had been, and Nile heavily suspected that Drew had to shatter several laws of physics whenever he painted himself into them. Joe was lightly kneading the very bottoms of her thighs as he watched her with his absurdly large doe eyes, and Nile managed to nod even as she kept thinking about Booker’s filthily murmured suggestions about what they could do together.

“Please. I-” Nile exhaled in a rush as he gave her an encouraging squeeze when her laugh turned into more of a partially broken squeak. “I don’t think I can use whatever witchcraft Drew usually uses to get out of these.”

“I’ve got faith that we can pull them off without witchcraft. After all, we eventually managed to convince Nicky to give up his Hammer pants in the nineties without it.” Joe despairingly shook his head even as Nicky threw a used napkin at his head with a disgruntled hiss. “You couldn’t have found his ass in those things with a map and a very dedicated six man team.”

“They were comfy! Do you have any idea how many knives I used to be able to stash in them?”

Nile gasped as a sudden revelation hit her, and she couldn’t quite hide her squeal of excitement in her hands as the guys swiveled at the sudden noise.

“Please, please tell me that Nicky had a perm when the terrible fashion decisions were going on.”

“You know, it’s not too late to return your Christmas presents if you keep being this sassy about my previous wardrobe choices.” Nicky’s indignant sniff seemed massively exaggerated, but Nile still twisted around enough to give him an apologetic kiss as he winked at her. “My hair has been perfectly fine for every year that I’ve been alive, and absolutely nobody can disagree with that.”

“I’ve still got some photos of when Nicky bleached his hair a few years after that.” Booker seemed to be doing his best to keep a straight face as he pulled her closer to his chest, but his gleeful laughter kept slipping out around the edges. “His style icon was Justin Timberlake when he had the ramen curls!”

Nile could see another verbal slap fight creeping over the horizon, and she was definitely ready for her long over due reward of getting somebody else’s fingers on her clit. She stripped her t-shirt off in one quick motion before she could overthink it, and quietly hissed through her teeth as the colder air of the room met her bare skin and brought her nipples to stiff peaks. Shit, she might’ve been less chilly if she had actually taken and worn one of Drew’s too small bras. 

“I’d love to see those photos later, but- Mmm.” She was still pulling her shirt off over her hair as Booker grabbed her. 

She happily ignored the minor distraction for the fact that he was kissing her like a better cover of the tawdry romance novels that had gotten passed through the barracks until somebody eventually shoved the tattered thing in a ziploc bag or inexpertly fixed it with a generous amount of duct tape. Nicky and Joe’s hands were lightly skimming over her skin from her hips upwards, and she moaned directly into Booker’s hungry mouth when those questing fingers stroked over her breasts with a gentleness that did nothing to hide the way that their owners were trembling slightly from nerves.

Well. The fact that three worldly men with that much collective sexual experience between them were quivering with nervous anticipation just from watching her take her top off were doing wonders for bolstering her confidence and boldness. She nipped at Booker’s lower lip with a pleased hum while she arched her chest into the other two’s waiting hands. Really, that soft startled noise that she got from the three of them at such a small move was pure ambrosia.

“You guys are looking a little overdressed right now.” She slipped her hands into the back pockets of Booker’s jeans to get a decent double handful of his pert little ass as she gave him a leisurely squeeze over his tucked away folding knife, a solitary tampon that was still in its wrapper, and a couple of rubberized ponytail holders that felt different from the ones she preferred. It only took a moment of thought before she smiled and kissed Booker again. Samara’s unruly cloak of hair probably destroyed hair accessories like it got paid to do it. “Come on, I bet it’s going to be way more fun to motorboat Joe than doing it to the cat.” 

All the nervous hesitation and uncertainty broke with the sound of Joe’s joyful laughter, and Nile stole a quick kiss off of him before everybody’s clothing started coming off with a frisky amount of groping, petting, laughter and ease. Even Drew’s Ass Encasing Jeans Of Lust Inducing Doom came off fairly easily once Booker pinned her shoulders down so that Joe could shuck her jeans off with a showman’s flourish.

Nicky’s surprisingly lush thighs and butt were putting up an equally surprising amount of resistance to having Joe’s borrowed pants pulled off of him as they stalled out around his hips. Nile mildly suspected that Nicky was hamming up just how thoroughly he was stuck, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain about getting to touch him while Booker fondly told him to ‘Clench your ass, you ass!’ as he exasperatedly wrestled with the small amount of loose fabric that he was using for leverage.

“Did you know that you have a beauty mark down here?” Nile gently swept her thumb across the dark birthmark that was nearly, but not quite on Nicky’s right hip. No, he really couldn’t have picked a prettier location to have it on his ass cheek if he tried. A substantial part of her soul was squealing like a giddy schoolgirl over the fact that she was touching Nicky’s butt while a very, very naked Joe kept her warm by cuddling up to her back as Booker dropped the occasional absentminded kiss on one of her ankles. 

“I do. Joe always likes to say that I have a beauty mark on both sets of cheeks.” Joe unrepentantly grinned even as Nicky looked at him with a dryly amused sigh. “And I do mean always in the literal sense.” Nicky twisted closer towards her as Booker squinted at Nicky’s hips with a calculating look, and Nile held her breath as Nicky cupped her cheek before he slowly kissed her own beauty mark. “Well, you and I almost match there. Same side and everything. Beaut-” Nicky’s compliment got abruptly cut off half way through by his own startled yelp as Booker suddenly pounced on him and shoved both of his hands inside Nicky’s back pockets with a growl. “Jesus Christ, Booker, there’s such a thing as foreplay, you know!”

“Ha!” Booker reared back upright with a hiss as he triumphantly shook the two thick books that he had just pried out of Nicky’s pockets, and Nile had to bite her lip at the picture he posed as he straddled Nicky’s thighs like a very naked and stacked liberian out for blood and late fees. 

“Of course there is, but not when you’re smuggling-” Nile hid her smile in Nicky’s chest as Booker quickly peeked at the titles of his brandished evidence. “A third edition of Good Omens, annnd…” There was another fast glance and a much more cautious sniff at the warped pages of the second one. “A Russian copy of Red Dragon, which apparently got used as chum for sharks at some point. No wonder we couldn’t get your damn pants off, Nicky.” 

Booker couldn’t bring himself to carelessly toss aside his name sake, and Nile pushed herself upright enough to fondly kiss him after he gently dropped them off the side of the bed and onto his abandoned jeans. Nicky’s bright green eyes were sparkling with mirth at the trouble that he had caused, and Nile helplessly laughed along with Joe as Nicky immediately got rid of the rest of his clothes with all the ease in the world. Nile didn’t bother hiding either her blush or her body as Booker watched her with the same awestruck look that had been on his face during the first time that he had got her in his bed.

“Ah, and now she’s laughing at my pain and suffering.” Booker crawled up between her legs with a wide smile and a feline grace that hadn’t been there the last time they did something like this. Nile did her best impression of a villainous laugh to cover up the flutter in her stomach and the slickness gathering between her legs as she felt the hot, hard lines of the everybody’s erections pressing up against her inner thigh, her outer hip, and the somewhat awkward spot behind her shoulder as Nicky tried to sort himself out. Booker’s smile sweetened and widened even more as he finally drew level with her mouth, and she arched up for a kiss that made every single one of her nerve endings sizzle before he pulled away enough to murmur against her mouth. “Sadism must be catching. I think we should wear condoms, though. Wouldn’t want you to have to pout again through cleanup.”

That memory surfaced in a flash, and Nile shakily exhaled as Booker’s erection smoothly slid up against the lips of her labia while she clenched her legs around his hips. No, she didn’t think she would’ve pouted as much as she had if Booker had cleaned up the mess of his come that had been left on her with his mouth.

“Mmm. I’ve got a handful of them in my pants pocket, Book.” Joe smelled so good as Booker rolled off the bed in his hunt for the promised condoms. Nile happily nuzzled in against Joe’s throat to have easier access to his velvety skin and the rich scent that was warmed by his pulse. His spicy cologne was the same one that Nicky wore, but there was also a hint of what Nile could hesitantly identify as myrrh, sunlight, and the elusive smell of the incense that drifted through Drew and Samara’s house. 

He shifted a little as he adjusted his grip on her waist, and Nile lazily ground herself against his cock as it pushed up against the join between her hip and her thigh. God, he was big, even if Nicky and Booker were barely behind him in the size department. She moved a little more towards him before she cried out into the safety of his neck as the thick shaft of his erection firmly rubbed up against her swollen clit. Joe’s whole body was vibrating with the force of his barely audible purring as he pulled her closer by his unyielding grip on her ass and- Oh shit. Nile helplessly whimpered as Joe effortlessly lifted her up enough so that he could slide her up and down against his shaft so that she was getting the perfect amount of heat, pressure and friction right where she needed it as she pleadingly mouthed at his chest and neck.

“There’s our good girl. Do you think that you can get off like this?” Nile buried a broken whine in Joe’s collarbone as the body warmed metal of his necklace nudged against her cheek. She just needed a little more stimulation than what her clit was getting, and then she would definitely get there.

“Fuck. Can you t-touch me a little more...down there?” Joe hummed against the top of her head in approval, and Nile whimpered in a harsh exhale as Joe shifted his handhold on her ass so that he could slide two fingers between her cheeks without breaking his rhythm of rubbing her up against himself. It wasn’t really what she meant, but she found that she didn’t have any protests about the taboo feeling of his finger tips briefly brushing over her unexplored anus. 

Granted, her head kind of felt like it was going to explode over the reality of somebody deliberately touching her there as she gasped for musky smelling air, but she still liked the idea of being fingered there as Joe neatly hooked two fingers inside her vagina from behind as she ground herself against his shaft. Oh. Oh, oh, oh… Nile was dimly aware that she was whimpering Joe’s name as he rubbed himself up against her in a rhythm that was starting to get less and less smooth. She was almost there, just a little more-

“Come on, Habibi, you need to get a condom on first.” Nicky’s voice was throatier than she had ever heard it before, but she still had to bite her lip to keep from crying from frustration as Joe reluctantly loosened his hold on her so that Nicky could reach her. He picked her up and neatly deposited her in Booker’s waiting lap a moment later, but Nile was embarrassed to find that she couldn’t stop her eyes from growing wet or keeping her disappointed pout from forming. “There you go, Tesoro. Just give Joe a second and- Ah.”

Nile was well aware that whining at Nicky for temporarily derailing her hard won orgasm wasn’t a terribly mature reaction, but she didn’t bother to put on a happy face for him as he made soft noises at her. She allowed him to gently tip her chin up so that she was forced to meet his eyes, and she quickly inhaled at the deeply thoughtful look on Nicky’s face. It was the same calculating look shared by every cat looking at something that was small, tasty and alive, but a certain light in Nicky’s big green eyes told her that he had an entirely different idea of devouring her than the average cat. His idea of playing with her before he finished her off was probably very similar to them, though. A little crying, being pawed at, begging for mercy, that sort of thing. Nile was a little shocked to find that she was looking forward to it.

“Nile. Dear sweet Nile.” A wave of goosebumps swept over her at Nicky’s gentle croon as he leaned in for a kiss, and she felt the inner walls of her vagina clench as Booker started gently pulling her thighs apart for Nicky’s viewing pleasure and hips. Nicky nipped at her lower lip with a slightly rougher graze of teeth. “Do you have any idea how gorgeous you are when you’re crying from frustration?”

Oh yeah, she was definitely fucked. Granted, it was finally in a way that she was really, really looking forward to.

“Well, there you have it, Nile. Your vagina shall never have another moment of peace if Nicky gets his way with the weeping and the frustration. Much like my nipples.” Booker’s mournful sniff only made Joe laugh as he kept working a condom packet open, and Nicky glare from he was dotting kisses down over her midriff. “Mind you, he is right about how beautiful you are when you’re all horny and frustrated. Still, I only know one song that’s appropriate for the sexual torment and teasing that you’re going to have to endure.”

Booker started singing a solemn and amazingly sacrilegious interpretive Last Rites that had many mentions of her vagina, and Nile couldn’t hold her giggles back for the world or the way that Nicky was glaring at the both of them with resigned exasperation. Booker swung into an even more mournful verse of the prayer, and Nile struggled to keep a straight face as Joe started vocally backing Booker up with some vaguely choir-esque ooh-ing and ahh-ing.

“Your nipples obviously haven’t been bitten enough lately, Booker. I’m going to fix that as soon as you hold still long enough. There’s still no excuse for you, Joe. Nile…” Nicky sighed deeply from where he was currently nuzzling into her inner thighs, and Nile tried her best to hold still as she watched him taste the slick that was clinging to her skin with lazy swipes of his tongue.

“Nicky, I’d like to point out that I’m just an innocent compared to these tw- Fuck!” Nile threw her head back with a breathless whimper and an arch of her back as Nicky sadistically moved his head so that her almost painfully sensitive clit was dragged down over the stark curve of his nose. As promised, his mouth definitely wasn’t touching her vagina, but his breath was warming her folds with every one of his exhalations as the tip of his nose slipped against her. She was having a hard time remembering why she didn’t want him to put his mouth there just yet as she knotted her hands in his hair, which was getting long enough to drape around his ears as she resisted the urge to pull on it and put him exactly where she wanted him. “Please, Nicky, I-'' Her plea came out on a broken gasp, and she writhed against Booker’s restraining hands as he kissed the side of her head.

“Yes, Nile?” Nicky had a very animalistic hunger in his eyes as he glanced up at her, and Nile felt a swirl of shocked pleasure at the bone deep realization that Nicky would happily let her hold his head still and fuck his face just as hard as she wanted to right now, and that if she wanted to sit on his face, he would thank her and ask her to stay there for as long as she felt like letting him do it. The thought only made her wetter, and she hissed through her teeth as she accidentally covered Nicky’s flushed mouth with her extra slick when they both twitched in two different directions at the same time. Nicky’s pupils immediately widened even more as he realized what was on his lips, and Nile tightened her fingers in his hair as he made a show out of tasting what she had left behind as he slowly licked his lips clean before he inhaled to speak. “Nile. Can I please-”

Joe made a somewhat stifled noise of bewildered despair from where he was kneeling on the bed as he faced away from them. Booker immediately reached out to touch one of Joe’s trembling shoulders, and Nile instantly disregarded whatever request that Nicky was going to make as Joe dropped his head forward with a much more pained noise than the last one that he had made.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Her question neatly folded in with Nicky’s concerned inquiry, and Nile frowned in worry as Joe’s shoulders quivered even more as he leaned back into Booker’s offered hand. “Joe?”

“My dick smells like guava now, and it’s pastel pink coloured.”

Well. It wasn’t like Nile had been trying to pinpoint the exact shade of Joe’s erection when she had been grinding herself against it, but she wouldn’t have described it as a pastel shade of anything. Booker and Nicky both had a light of dawning recognition in their eyes as Nile finally realized that Joe was trembling with laughter rather than tears as he looked over his shoulder at her. He immediately swiveled around on his knees to show them what he meant, and Nile bit down hard on her clenched fist so that she couldn’t laugh at his gently bobbing erection. It wasn’t like she had centuries worth of experience sexually, but it was an unspoken and universal rule that you didn’t laugh at your partner’s genitals unless they damn well asked you to. Joe grandly gestured to his equipment with both hands.

“I look like I just finished dicking down a paint can of Pepto-Bismol!” Joe was still helplessly snickering at his own dick, and Nile did her best to keep a serious expression on her face as she nodded in agreement with his assessment. “Seriously, what kind of fucking condoms are Samara and Drew buying?”

“You look like a one eyed snake muppet on Sesame Street that got booted off once they realized what a terrible idea you were.” Nile hastily tacked on an amendment to her roast. “But like a python or an anaconda. You know, big, friendly…”

“Thank you, Nile. Booker? C’mon, I need your take on this, and whatever God awful colour your dick is wrapped in.”

“You look like that gigantic bubble gum flavoured gummy worm that Andy bought you for your birthday last year.” Booker sighed as he glanced downwards, and Nile curiously peeked over her shoulder at his cock, which had been grinding up against the small of her back since Nicky had dropped her in his lap. “It’s pale green, and I’m pretty sure that I’m honey dew scented.”

“The colour suits you, Booker.” Nile wickedly grinned up at him. “You kinda look like a Vulcan during Pon-Farr.”

“Urrgh, you’re awful. Can’t believe that I’m about to rub one out of a Trekkie.” Booker’s scratchy kisses on her neck showed that he wasn’t nearly so much against the idea as he made it sound. Nile squirmed against him with a somewhat breathless sigh while Joe perked up at the sight and started moving in their direction.

“Nicky?”

He had relaxed enough to rest his cheek on her thigh after Joe’s initial burst of fussing, and she got a lovely view of Nicky’s face as he stared at his husband’s naked pelvis like he was wondering exactly where his absurdly long life had gone wrong. He made a thoughtful sucking noise around one of his teeth that Nile had only ever heard him make after Andy managed to accidentally destroy a kitchen appliance in a truly spectacular manner. Nile lightly combed her fingers through his hair as he squinted at Joe with one eye before he started talking in a very gentle tone like he suspected Joe was going to bolt as soon as the words came out of his mouth.

“Cotton candy themed tentacle porn hentai.” His mouth curled into an immensely satisfied smirk at their speechless reaction, and he hammered the last nail into the coffin before anybody could string together enough words for a response. “With only one tentacle, of course.”

Joe tackled Nicky even further into her lap with a howl just as laughter started erupting out of everybody at the demurely put and shockingly filthy string of words that Nicky had just told them in his pretty little accent. Nile only laughed harder as Nicky finally broke under Joe and started cackling just as hard as the rest of them.

“Nicky! How do you sassy little fucks even know about tentacle porn?”

“T-They probably invented it, mon Coeur.” Booker was desperately wheezing for air behind her, and Nile grinned as the occasional undignified snort broke through his giddy sniggering as he pulled her closer to himself. “Or Andy, maybe. I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, though.”

“Oh come on, Booker, you’ve definitely worn an outfit or two that could’ve come out of one. Remember that cute little plaid miniskirt you were swishing around in about a hundred and fifty years ago?”

Nile choked at the sudden mental image of Booker’s long legs disappearing up into a flashy little strip of a skirt, and she wildly wondered if he would put one on again if she did the same for him.

“It was a kilt, Joe, and I was wearing it because we were in Scotland! You know that it was a lot longer before we had to pull that piece off for a field bandage.”

“Welp, you might just have to track a replacement down so that we can all oogle you in all your leggy glory.”

Nile caught a quick glimpse of Booker’s blushing cheeks before he hid his face in her shoulder with a bashful mumble of something in French, which only made Nicky and Joe’s eyes go even softer than usual. His next words were much clearer and in English.

“What type of condom did you end up with, Nicky?”

“Um…” Nile followed Nicky’s gaze down to his cock, which was wrapped in a condom that was a cute shade of pastel orange. “Orange. I can’t figure out what the scent is for the life of me, though.”

“Do you want a hand with figuring it out, Nicky?” Nile fought down a blush of her own as she locked eyes with Nicky, who she could tell was already trying to parse out exactly what she meant with her request. “I’d really like to jerk you off, Nicky. May I?”

Nicky smiled sweetly at her, and she felt contentment wash through her as the guys tried to snuggle in even closer to her.

“I’d love that, Nile.”

She didn’t actually get to bring Nicky to climax with a hand job even after he breathlessly gasped his way through showing her how he liked to be touched with an enthusiastic gentleness, but he really seemed to enjoy driving her to distraction with his mouth and the quickly disappearing love bites that he was leaving on her trembling thighs after he had eased his way out of her hand.

Nile breathed a little heavier as she watched him nuzzle the back of Booker’s hand while Booker finished slicking her up with one of the packets of warming lube that she had grabbed earlier. Booker didn’t tease her for too long before he smoothly pushed two of his long calloused fingers into her, and Joe’s sweet tasting mouth swallowed her broken whimpers as Booker started grinding the heel of his hand into her clit with the perfect amount of pressure and roughness without throwing off the rhythm of his thrusting fingers.

The repetitive wet sound of him working himself in and out of her was amazingly filthy to her ears, and Nile struggled for air as wordless whimpers forced their way out of her between breathless curses in every language that she could come up with as she quickly spiraled closer and closer to her looming orgasm.

She was distantly aware that the three of them were trying to drown her in a sea of complimentary praises in languages and words that she couldn’t really decipher in her haze of pleasure, but she appreciated them all the same as Joe kneaded at her sweat slicked skin with Nicky’s help as he did his level best in his ongoing efforts to make her come with just with his mouth alone. 

Nile allowed herself a very feline smile against Joe’s mouth before she rectified her thought slightly. Making her come by kissing her on her mouth was an entirely different and much more challenging beast than the other places on Nile’s body that he could put his mouth on. The guys didn’t seem to be in any real rush to get to their own climaxes even with all of the lazy rutting and grinding they were doing against her, which ran distinctly opposite of most of her sexual encounters up to this point. She really wasn’t going to look that particular gift horse in the mouth if they wanted her to come before they did.

Nicky hummed her name before he dipped his head down to leave a trail of unhurried kisses over one side of her waist and rib cage as he drifted vaguely upwards under the steady tug of Booker’s other hand in his hair.

“Nile?” Joe’s voice was syrupy slow with pleasure and happiness as he nuzzled into a spot that was just below her collarbone, and she unsteadily exhaled as he started to gently massage one of her breasts, which happened to be the one that Nicky was slowly making his way towards. 

Joe’s clever fingers mischievously tweaked her nipple when she didn’t respond immediately, and she whimpered through the quickly growing flood of ecstasy and heat as she watched Nicky playfully mouth at the back of Joe’s outstretched hand in an obvious show of where he actually wanted to put his lips. She glanced down to find that Joe was softly smiling at the three of them. 

“I’m so happy that I’m here with the three of you.” Nile shuddered under the dual assault of Booker’s fingers kneading at a spot inside her that threatened to send off fireworks in her mind, and Joe's delighted dark eyes staring at her as he rubbed his bearded cheek up against a very sensitive stretch of skin. “Nicky and I really want to taste you-” His fingers demonstratively pinched the nipple that he was holding captive under his hand as she squirmed under him. “Here. Would you like that?” 

That might just be the thing that would send her off the edge. Nile frantically nodded as Booker rumbled against her back like an especially pleased and over grown tom cat.

“Please, Joe. Nicky-” Joe gave her nipple a quick affectionate kiss before he greedily sucked it into his mouth with a vibrating growl that sent sparks flying up her spine, and Nile threw her head back onto Booker’s waiting shoulder with a badly bitten back scream that was caused by the white hot spike of pleasure that rushed through her as Nicky immediately latched onto her other nipple with a noise that was much closer to a purr as he forcefully pulled her closer to them with an arm around her back. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck-”

“I told you that they’re good with their mouths, Sweetheart.” Booker’s long fingers didn’t slow or speed up from their perfect consistent pace as they pistoned in and out of her while he murmured into her ear. “You know, I had plans for our day after in Vancouver until your flight and my panic attack interfered with it.”

“Y-Yeah?” Nicky and Joe took two especially hungry pulls at her nipples with their scalding hot mouths like something was actually going to come out of them if they suckled at her with enough enthusiasm. Nile helplessly whined when a particularly clever move of Joe’s tongue only made her nipples tighten even more in both of their mouths, and Booker groaned into her ear like he was the one getting his nipples sucked. God, she was getting so fucking close to going over the edge. “What w-were you going to do with me that day?”

“Mmm. Well, I was going to sleep in until you woke up, and maybe give you a foot rub in your sleep if I got up before you did. Then I’d give you a good morning kiss, get down on my knees, and beg you in whatever language you wanted me to for the chance to eat you out until you screamed, and I’d do it over and over again until you got tired of my mouth.” Nile keened at the image that he was summoning up with his gravelly voice, and she felt him smile against the side of her head as Nicky and Joe appreciatively hummed against her breasts. 

“Then I’d make breakfast for you, of course. Some of that really good steak from the butcher that was down the block from us. Those carrot cake waffles that you had been wanting to try from that cookbook you had been flipping through. Butter poached eggs. Toast. Some of those Rainier cherries. After we were done with that, I would’ve checked to see if you wanted me to go down on you again. Maybe I’d could’ve eaten you out under the kitchen table and seen if you could come again before Joe and Nicky could’ve caught us. God, can you imagine what they would’ve said if they had seen us going at it?”

Joe’s dark eyelashes fluttered as he moaned around her breast at the fantasy that Booker was spinning. A quick moment of eye contact with Nicky’s fiery green eyes filled her in on the fact that he was making some very detailed plans for the future of bending her, Joe, and Booker over the footboard of the bed one at a time, and fucking them until any doubts of how much he loved them vanished.

Her legs involuntarily spasmed shut around Booker’s busily moving hand as she fought to keep her eyes open so that she could memorize every detail of the four of them together as her climax got so close that she could almost feel it. What little she could see of Booker’s face looked so, so happy. She summoned enough will power and focus to ask one more question about their altered past while she scratched her way across Nicky and Joe’s eagerly arching backs as they slickly mouthed at her.

“That sounds nice. I’m a little sad t-that I- Fuck. Wasn’t worth you busting out your baking talents on our day off.” Booker was generally apathetic about cooking for the most part. (Not to Nicky’s horrifically creative extremes, granted, but she only had to watch him and Andy grimly devour a decades old expired whole canned chicken once before she learned to run when either of them reached for a can opener with that glazed over dead look in their eyes.) His mind blowing baking was something else entirely, though.

It wasn’t like he ever lowered himself enough to produce a lackluster chocolate chip muffin or any other easily made baked good, but there was the rare day every now and then when Booker was either feeling good or nostalgic (or the rare occasion where they overlapped), and he unleashed himself upon whatever baking supplies their current safehouse had. He usually tended towards French pastries with a bellowed war cry of home country superiority, but he was amenable to branching out if somebody was feeling home sick or especially melancholy.

He had made her a New York style cheesecake with wild blueberry preserves and a homemade gingersnap crust in Oslo a mere two months after Merrick. Nile hadn’t realized how much she had been longing for anything that reminded her of home until he had quietly presented her with a fat wedge of it after dinner one night. Joe had just as silently slipped her an ancient but clean handkerchief for her running nose and streaming tears afterwards when she had been wedged between him and Booker as they watched Andy’s movie choice in the dark room.

Booker sighed happily against her cheek, and Nile shook her way out of the bitter sweet memories while she threatened to fall apart between the three of them.

“Of course you are. I just would’ve waited until we got back from a tour of your favourite art galleries and a day out on the town. I think I would’ve made you those croissants with the almond cream from Paris that you liked so much.” Nile made a soft noise of confusion as she arched up into Booker’s steadily moving hand and Nicky and Joe’s quietly nursing mouths while her thoughts started to go fuzzy around the edges. She- She only had those just a day or two after England and Merrick. He wouldn’t have been taking notes on what she liked that soon. Booker lovingly kissed her cheek as he twined the fingers of his free hand in with hers. “Yes, I liked you that far back. Come for us, Nile. I can tell that you’re close-”

Her breathing hitched as she looked down at where Joe and Nicky were still working away at her breasts. They were both watching her with that bright glow of unfiltered happiness in their eyes, and she felt so, so loved- Nile came with a ringing in her ears, and a swelling bubble of joy in her chest and throat. She lazily floated in the tingly clouds of the aftermath of her orgasm for quite a while, secure in the knowledge that she was safe with the three of them. She was faintly aware of Joe and Nicky’s heads shifting from her chest to her shoulders as they moved up next to her with a blanket in tow. She got a smattering of kisses on her cheek and her mouth from the three of them, and Nile blissfully smiled before she settled in to bask a little more while their conversation started filtering in through the haze.

“-You bought me a gold collar, Joe. The convention definitely counted as our first formal date.”

“Nooo, I brought you an entire picnic basket in the truck after that. It was much more romantic and less traumatic than-” The hand that Joe was trying to ineffectively gesture with was trapped under the blanket that they were all wrapped in, and Nile lazily poked at it as it bumped up against her side. Joe’s pleased smile immediately grew into a grin that was made out of pure sunshine at her showing signs of movement again, and Nile contently nuzzled into his cheek and his surprisingly soft beard. “Hey, Beautiful. How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m melting into the mattress. Very, very good.” Nile rubbed her thumb across the back of Nicky’s hand while he kept holding her hand captive. Booker made a softly pleased noise behind her, and Nile rolled her head around to give him a leisurely kiss while his eyes went heavily lidded from her praise. “Excellent work, guys. Ten out of ten, would definitely do it again. Five stars on Uber.” Nicky made a small questioning noise at her while Booker’s cheeks slowly turned crimson above his bashful grin. “You know, for everybody’s excellent work in getting me there.” 

“That’s terrible, Nile.” Booker’s large hand was still keeping her mound warm as he cupped her between her legs, and she breathlessly giggled as he scrubbed his bristly jaw up against her cheek in a false reprimand while his fingers flexed against her vulva. “You know, I think we’ve suffered through enough over the years without having a sassy young thing using word play against us. You should probably be punished for that.”

“Do you mean ‘pun’ished?”

Nicky and Joe started cackling a moment or two later, and Nile squealed with protesting laughter as Booker growled at her and playfully pretended to bite at her exposed neck as he did a complicated rolling maneuver that coordinated with Joe and Nicky’s own sudden movements. She was still laughing when Booker finally settled down in a sitting position with his ass firmly planted in Joe’s lap while Joe leaned his chest into Booker’s broad back. She and Nicky were in a fairly similar position, even if they were both straddling one of Booker’s outstretched legs.

“You’re really lucky that you’re cute, Nile.” She shakily exhaled as Booker coaxingly curled his fingers against her labia in a come-hither motion while his thigh flexed underneath her. Nicky’s erection impatiently twitched between the cheeks of her ass as she arched her back into him at Booker’s gentle tease with his hand. She huffed a little while Booker’s wide smile brightened even more as Nicky kissed the side of her neck and jaw under the weight of Joe’s aroused stare. “Come on, I’ve been dying to find out what you taste like for ages now.” 

Nicky spoke into her shoulder with an amused murmur that dripped with mischief.

“Well, you may as well try for that, Booker, since I don’t think that you’ll get to try the Italian Wedding Consummation Soup unless you dig it out of my condom later.”

Booker squawked in disgust as he lashed out with a very precise kick that harmlessly thudded off of Nicky’s knee, and Nile helpfully sent an elbow back into Nicky’s chest as he started gleefully snickering like the semi-feral trash monster that he truly was.

“Jesus Sainted Christ, Nicky! Do you really kiss Joe with that mouth?”

“To be perfectly fair, he also does plenty of other things to me with that same mouth.” Joe’s eyes were warming into molten chocolate as he fondly smiled at all three of them. Nile happily let herself get tangled in the knot of kissing and cuddling with Booker and Joe as Nicky leaned over her shoulder to get his spectacularly filthy mouth on his husband. Booker’s fingers slickly moved between her legs to gather a little more of her combined slick and lube in the middle of it all, and she shivered in anticipation as he slid his hand free while Joe tried to pull all three of them closer to himself. “Go on, Booker, tell us what Nile tastes like down there.”

Booker leisurely licked one of his wet fingers clean, and Nile felt her heart drop directly into her stomach as he reacted to the taste with a wince. Her face must’ve been projecting her dejected mortification at his reaction to what she tasted like, because Booker’s eyes immediately widened in apology as he pulled her closer to his precariously angled lap.

“No, no, Nile, you taste fine! Great, even, it’s just that the lube we used feels really hot in my mouth, and it’s a bit of an odd sensation when you’re not expecting it. It’s not like I ever got to taste that particular combination back in my day and I just-”

She sat up on her knees with the aid of Nicky’s steadying hands on her hips, and brought Booker’s panicked explanation to a faltering stop by kissing the corner of his mouth with all of the relieved affection and warmth that she could pack into it. The tense line of his shoulders slowly relaxed as she drifted to the center of his mouth, and she gently caught his kiss bruised lower lip between her teeth as he softly moaned against her mouth. She stayed right where she was while Joe slowly wrapped his fist around Booker’s twitching cock as he cautiously watched the side of Booker’s blushing face.

“It’s okay, Babe. I’ll make sure that you get a decent view of me licking myself out of the mouth of whoever eats me out first.”

The rumbling, low pitched growling that came from the three of them at her boldly declared intentions was fun, but the aftermath of Nicky roughly rubbing another orgasm out of her while the four of them kissed, rubbed and rutted against each other until Nicky, Joe and Booker finally climaxed around the same time was a God damned delight.

Hell, Joe had even managed to make her come for a third time around the thick stretch of his fingers once their post-orgasm aftershocks died down a little bit.

Nile blissfully sighed into the space between Joe’s shoulder and Booker’s midriff as Nicky snuggled into her back with a happy huff of air that warmed the back of her head while he plastered himself against her. Lovely. It was absolutely lovely, even if Booker was starting to half heartedly complain in a fucked out grumble about how he was losing feeling in the leg that she and Nicky were lying on.

A sudden lightning bolt of realization broke through her post-orgasm haze, and she immediately squeezed Joe’s closest bicep with an excited squeak. 

“What’s up, Hayati?” Joe didn’t seem to have any issues with summoning up a meltingly sweet smile for her, even if he and Booker looked like they were two long blinks away from falling asleep. Nile gave his arm another giddy pat before she revealed the answer to the mystery that her subconsciousness had apparently been working over while the boys had been keeping the rest of her body busy.

“Kumquat and lychee! I finally figured what flavour Nicky’s condom was, and I’m pretty sure that was what his dick smelled like.”

“Hey-o!” She gleefully accepted Joe’s excited high five despite all of the sighing that Nicky was burying in her hair, and she beamed up at Joe as he leaned down to give her a proud kiss. “I knew that there were going to be upsides to having three geniuses in my bed.”

Booker made a feeble noise of self deprecation at Joe’s compliment, but he had a bright spark in his eyes when he lifted his head to look at them.

“I guess all of the condoms were in tropical flavours. Do you suppose we really should’ve pushed the boat out and tossed some fruit salads for each other? You know, because of the-” Booker kept cheerfully chattering through the throw pillow that Nicky was loosely holding down over Booker’s face while his cheeks turned pink from Booker’s muffled but deeply filthy suggestions.

“Well, you’d definitely have to work a cherry flavour in there if we did try that. You know, since somebody would be popping that particular cherry of mine if they wanted to toss my salad.”

Nile brightly grinned to herself as Nicky actually choked at that one. They were going to have so much fun together.

\--

“Come on, Book, you’re going to make me drop this-” Nile couldn’t help but arch her neck up into Booker’s mouth despite her feebly stern words while the fragile contents of the tray that she was carrying rattled from her own wobbling hands and the movements of the descending elevator. Nicky and Joe both looked a little too pleased with just how shaky Booker was making her with just a few stolen kisses, and Nile sent both of them a glare that she hoped looked even a little bit reprimanding. “-Tray. I’m too broke to replace this stuff if any of it gets broken, and I’m not even sure what I could possibly bribe Samara with to get his forgiveness.”

“I’d offer to help with weeding the garden and greenhouse, personally.” Booker pulled away from her after he gave her shoulder one last lingering kiss, and Nile shivered a little at the loss. “Or some of those fancy little heirloom seed packets. He gets all squeaky if you find one that he doesn’t have already.”

“Cute pictures of weird looking pigeons.” Nicky gave her a crooked little smile as she looked back at him. “They’re his favourite birds. There’s quite a few of them downtown that will land on him and let him pet them. Our poor Habibi’s still envious about that.”

“I’m not jealous about it.” Joe had the tiniest bit of a pout going on despite his firmly put words, and Nile had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at him. “It’s just that I can’t keep that damn pair of swans from trying to chase me at the park, and he’s out there tickling feral pigeons- Huh.” Nile looked up from where she had automatically stepped through the elevator doors when they had opened to where Joe was thoughtfully staring at a closed door that was blocking the entryway to the kitchen as dreamily paced music drifted out from under the doorjamb. “I didn’t even know that the kitchen had a door that you could close. Do you suppose they’re trying to keep the cats from getting into something in there, Nicky?”

“I think both of the cats were heading out to terrorize the greenhouse when we went upstairs.”

Booker made an indistinct sound of agreement, and Nile looked over to see that he was listening to something besides the music or them with a frown and a cocked head as he hesitantly followed after them. She put a little more effort into trying to hear whatever he was listening to. Ah- There. She could pick up the barely audible snippets of Drew and Samara’s voices, but she could only hear them quietly talking to each other in indistinct French. Booker’s eyebrows were still rapidly furrowing together, but neither Joe or Nicky looked all that concerned with trying to listen in on their conversation.

Nile paused to see if the guys were going to come up with any suggestions or objections, and shrugged under the weight of her heavy tray when nobody came up with anything.

“They’re probably just plotting to usurp your title of Loviest Doviest Relationship, guys. I’d love to find out what song that they’re playing, though.” She shuffled her loaded tray around for a few seconds in an attempt to balance it on her braced hip and open the door at the same time, and she flashed a grateful smile at Booker when he liberated her tray before she threw her weight behind turning the stiff door handle. “Thanks, Book. Is this one of the artists from your phone, Joe?”

“Yeah, but Samara turned me onto Raveena first. He has it on his playlist for when he’s- Ohfuckdon’tgointhere!” Joe’s suddenly panicked scramble of words overlapped with Booker’s yelp of recognition, which came just ahead of Nicky’s hissed Italian curse word. Nile jerked to a stop half way across the kitchen’s threshold, but even Booker colliding with her back and accidently knocking both of them further into the room couldn’t distract her from the scantily clad and eye catching spectacle that consisted of Drew fucking Samara a mere two feet away from them.

She was fuzzily aware of the strangled squeak that slipped out of her throat, and the similarly strained noise that Booker was making, but she still found that she couldn’t look away from where Drew was holding Samara up as he wrapped his long legs wrapped around Drew’s hips, or the way that Drew had bound Samara’s wrists together with a silky strip of brightly coloured fabric and tied a loop of the scarf onto a thick hook far above Samara’s head so that he was left stretched out and prettily panting as he hung in place.

Even with all of that going on, it was mostly the way that they were looking at each other that made it impossible to look away from them as they came to a panting stop at the sudden intrusion.

Her Dad had looked at her Mom like that when she had been a kid. Nicky and Joe also looked at each other like that (She had blushed and hid her face in Booker’s shoulder when that loving stare had moved onto them up in their bedroom just a few minutes ago.) There had been a slowly growing spark like that in Quynh’s eyes when Nile had shown her a rare photo of Andy on her phone when they had been waiting for their luggage in the airport.

It was that pure, unflinching adoration and love that tasted like marshmallow fluff, strawberries, and buttery pancakes in the back of Nile’s mouth, and it wasn’t even their fucking wedding day yet. It was obvious that Joe’s poor heart was going to explode from the romance and cuteness of it all when the day finally arrived.

“Well, fuck.” Samara sighed even as his rosy cheeks went a few shades pinker with the force of his blush, and Nile finally managed to blink as Samara rested his cheek against Drew’s forehead while the other man jerked his head around to watch Nile and Booker. “I told you we should’ve replaced that lock, Pet.”

Drew sagged against Samara with a complicated little noise that managed to somehow communicate that Drew had meant to do it, but the damn door knob was a bonafide Art Deco one from the 1920’s that had come with the house, and Drew really liked the way it looked with the rest of their home and its Prohibition hidey holes. Nile really hoped that she’d eventually be able to communicate that much information with what was mostly a low, prolonged whine.

“I know, Baby, but I’d really like to get back to what we were doing, and I’m pretty sure that one of our immortal house guests is going to keel over from a heart attack soon if we don’t get them back out that door.” Nile was mortified to hear herself making another one of those high pitched squeaky noises as Samara adjusted his hips while thoughtfully biting at his lower lip. “Nile, would you and the guys mind leaving for like ten-” Drew shifted his grip on Samara’s thighs, and Nile really wished that she could stop making that noise as Samara let out an honest to God moan while his head dropped back against the wall. “Nine. Nine minutes. Please, Nile.”

“Urrrehh?”

No, no, no, that was so much worse than the squeaking, and she could just hear Nicky’s quiet snickering over the shocked sound of Joe’s muffled laughter. Bastards. She couldn’t believe that she was eventually going to fuck the two of them in the wake of this kind of betrayal.

“I think we broke Nile, sweetheart.” Samara’s fond look of heavily distracted amusement wasn’t helping Nile’s composure in the slightest, and Nile thought she had already gone through her fair share of sexually related mortification in her short life.

“I can see that. I don’t think Booker is doing much better, though. I haven’t even seen him turn that color in our hot yoga sessions.”

That finally jolted Nile out of her own personal purgatory, and she looked over her shoulder to find that Booker was frozen in place like a very muscle bound and poleaxed fox as he stared at Drew and Samara. He was also nearly the exact shade as a red fox from the tips of his ears all the way down to where a wedge of his chest was framed by his button up shirt. He didn’t look like he had blinked since they had entered the kitchen, but at least the stunned but clear look in his blue eyes didn’t show that he was having a traumatic flashback or anything.

Samara’s own deepening blush was more of a truer red than Booker’s more russet-esque shade as he hesitantly called out to Booker.

“Book?” That actually made him blink, and Nile finally convinced her feet to start moving in his direction as Samara watched him with a slowly growing worry. Samara opened his mouth to talk again, and Nile could see what was coming as Drew accidently fumbled his steadying grip on Samara and caused his next word to come out in a punched out mewl of pleasure that immediately seared itself into Nile’s brain. “-Sebastian!”

Booker actually yelped at that, and Nile didn’t have the will power or enough fried brain cells to bang together to protest about Booker taking the liberty of lunging for her, picking her up with one arm around her waist, and sprinting out the kitchen door like Satan and Napoleon Bonaparte himself were after his ass with a red hot poker and a draft order. Joe firmly pushed the door shut behind them with a wince as Nicky made a show out of straightening Nile’s shirt in order to avoid eye contact with any of them.

“Sorry I didn’t catch that in time. Samara has that singer on his romancing playlist.”

Booker glared at him with wide eyes as he made a noise that was not unlike what a rapidly deflating balloon animal would sound like if it could sarcastically squeak out ‘No fucking shit.’ Nicky sympathetically patted him on his back.

“Well, it could’ve been a lot worse than that.” Booker glared even harder at Nicky’s somewhat feeble reassurance. “That’s fair enough, it’s not like I’m not coming up with any shittier examples than that at the moment. Do you want to kill an hour and give Nile a tour of the grounds?” Booker grimly nodded at Nicky’s suggestion, and Niles' words finally freed themselves.

“They seriously have actual grounds like Downton Abbey?”

“No, there’s too many fruit trees in the way for it to really count. It still makes Samara froth at the mouth like a peasant during the French Revolution if you call it that in front of him, though. Just fabulous entertainment first thing in the morning.”

The grounds were nice. Hummingbirds, buzzing bees, and butterflies of every size and colour filled the partially enclosed garden paths that were covered in lush tendrils of ivy plants and long draping branches of bright purple wisteria flowers that reached down to tickle the back of Nile’s head and pretty much envelop Booker and Joe’s stooped heads as they moved. The smell of underfoot mint and darker, richer herbs harmoniously mixed with the smell of the wisteria flowers and the fat, palm sized tangerine coloured rose blooms that had a scent like citrus laced pears when Nicky coaxed her over to smell one.

Nile didn’t even get a decent look at the orchard, the greenhouse, or the berry bushes, but it was a real insight into the more hidden parts of Samara’s inner core and the type of the environment that he was working to surround himself with. 

The half a dozen Canadian geese that were clustered around the large pond in the North grounds that had initially perked up and hopefully honked or whistled at them before viciously hissing like a clutch of enraged cobras as they realized that none of them had white blond hair or offers of scritchies seemed pretty bang on with both of Samara’s violent and supernaturally charming sides.

Not even Nicky’s retaliatory stink eye seemed to intimidate the furiously flapping birds in the slightest, and they went back back to the house after Joe’s cautious attempt to disperse the same compliments that Samara usually paid the birds in Russian backfired in the form of now aggressively snapping geese.

Drew and Samara had switched to a catchy string of Scissor Sisters songs and into comfortably tattered t-shirts with jeans for Drew and yoga pants for Samara. They were still in the kitchen though, and washing the trays full of dirtied fine china dishes that Nile and the guys had abandoned when they had bolted outside.

“What do you two think you’re doing?” Joe’s playful grumble only made Drew smirk at him over his shoulder, but it actually made Samara put down the tea cup that he was washing and turn around to face them with wide blue eyes.

“We didn’t want you guys to have to wash dishes after your date. Book. I’m sorry about-” It was a little bizarre to watch, but Nile felt a great wash of warmth fill her chest as Samara and Booker wordlessly worked out the lingering awkwardness between the two of them with just shared eye contact and some minimally expressive facial movements. They both visibly relaxed at the same time, and Samara offered up a smile that was softer than his usual. “I think this is going to be one of my favorite Winter Holidays yet. Nearly everybody’s here, and we’re all safe and in one piece. I suppose I shouldn’t have said that quite yet, just in case the geese get really cheesed off and try to eat you before tomorrow, Joe.”

Joe was looking distinctly misty eyed as he spoke in a voice that was just as soft as Samara’s smile.

“I really want to pick you up and give you a smooch, Samara.”

“Feel free to go right ahead and do that, handsome, but I am becoming a burly beefcake and you might not be able to pick me upppp!” Samara’s last word dissolved into a giddy squeak as Joe snatched him up into the air with just his broad hands around Samara’s trim waist. Nile appreciatively watched Joe’s flexing muscles with Nicky and Booker as he grinned and quickly spun in a circle with Samara. “Jesus, you’re going to put my therapists out of work if you keep doing this on a regular basis. We could patent it. Get picked up and hugged by gorgeous people and cure ninety percent of your woos.”

“Ehhh, it’s only fixing forty percent of all of my issues.” Booker’s whole face crinkled up with the force of his grin as Samara flipped him off behind Joe’s head before tenderly cupping Joe’s face between his hands. It didn’t really occur to Nile to feel jealous or possessive in the face of the move that Samara pulled next. After all, the kiss that he was pressing to Joe’s smiling mouth was so gentle and affectionate that it forcibly reminded Nile of every time that she had kissed a baby bunny or kitten right between their fuzzy wuzzy ears. It looked like it was nice to be on the receiving end of that kiss, and Joe definitely needed more nice things in his life after the state he had been in when Nile had gotten back with Quynh. “Yeah, yeah, you kissed him good. Come on, Joe, throw me the burly beefcake and let me get my own hug in, would you?”

Joe took Booker’s request literally, and Nile looked away at where Nicky had taken over washing the dishes as Joe (gently) flung Samara into Booker’s waiting arms while Samara swore at both of them. Nile grinned at the both of them as Samara eventually managed to get his ass planted into one of the high backed bar stools and Booker all cozily nestled up in his lap despite the half a foot of height and fifty pounds of weight he had over the younger man.

Drew had silently appeared by her side in the short time that Nile hadn’t been looking at him and Nicky, and Drew mutely offered up the velvet jewelry box that he was holding in the palm of his hand. Nile cautiously opened it up once her heart stopped hammering in her chest from Drew’s sudden appearance, and her eyes immediately burned with tears at the sight of her Dad’s golden cross necklace all safely tucked away in the small box.

“We found this in the shower after you and Quynh died. We just wanted to make sure that you got it back okay- Ah. Yeah, it’s alright, kid, I’ve got you.”

Drew was really good at hugging despite all of his pointy body parts. Nile buried her face in the scar warped skin of Drew’s neck with a wet series of sniffles, and basked in the spearmint and vanilla scent of Drew’s perfume as he soothingly rubbed his hands up and down Nile’s back without loosening his hold on her.

“You smell really good.”

“Thanks. I wouldn’t know if I actually do or not, though. Samara’s pretty much in charge of making sure that I smell nice and not like patients’ bodily fluids or stale sweaty scrubs. I’m really placing my social well being in his hands on a daily basis.”

Nile burst into tearful laughter at Drew’s wry words, and she felt him smile against the top of her head as Joe and Nicky piled onto the hug. It was going to be a great Winter Holiday. It would probably be even more so once she was able to stop crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bwahaha! This chapter may be late, but it's even fatter than usual, and I have been happily basking in all of your lovely comments and kudos. My first cat actually would steal and bury shoe insoles in his litter box, so Joe's comment is my tribute for him. Booker is the type of Bro who would carry around tampons and hair ties even if he doesn't need them, and Drew and Samara love him for it.
> 
> Feel free to comment if you liked this, and you might just make my heart explode from joy. <3
> 
> The next chapter will be from Andy and Quynh's POVS.


	12. Can You Remember How We Used To Do This?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quynh and Andy's relationship used to be pretty straight forward and relatively easy even with all the issues that immortality brought up, but it's been centuries, and things are a little harder to straighten out now. It doesn't necessarily mean that Quynh's not thinking about Andy in tall leather boots, though. Flirting, kisses, and Mortal Kombat references are liberally sprinkled in.

Quynh was alive. It wasn’t like Andy was surprised by that fact, but the fact that Quynh was perfectly sane and slinking around like she had spent the entirety of the last five centuries above ground was a much bigger shock. The fact that Drew and Samara were loyal enough to Quynh to mulishly conceal the fact that their frequently mentioned best friend was actually Andy’s motherfucking soulmate was considerably less surprising, since Quynh was a deeply lovable individual and Drew and Samara were two tenacious assholes with flawless taste in choosing their friends and interior design. 

Quynh’s secrets were probably even torture proof in their hands if push came to finger removal with a rusty bonesaw.

Andy quietly groaned as she buried her face in her hands, and she miserably shoved her fingers through her hair while she straightened up so that she could watch Quynh as she animatedly chatted with and accepted a bulging grocery bag of her belongings from Drew and Samara. 

She really shouldn’t have yelled at them like that. 

It wasn’t like she wanted the two of them to start yapping about Quynh’s immortality to every person that looked like they would be even mildly interested in it, but she knew she had crossed a certain line when Samara had hidden any of his emotionally fragile parts in order to batten down in the face of her rage while Drew had incandescently lit up and got right in her face like Joe had done a few times over the centuries. It wasn’t like the light teasing and flirting they had done afterward had really fixed anything.

Andy was going to try and fix things, and it wasn’t just for Quynh’s sake. She liked the pair of them for themselves, and not just because of Drew’s relation to Joe and the way that Samara and Booker made each other happier just by being in the same room together. Samara was incredibly soft under the bristly skills that he had armoured his underbelly with, and he was so tenderly sweet around animals that even Lykon would’ve marveled at Samara. Andy had gotten a really good view of one of the many examples of that when they had been staying with Nile and Jake’s older sister on the East coast.

Even Booker had offered to smote the desperately scrabbling spider that had accidently landed directly on Samara’s closed eye when Andy had been lounging in her shared guest bed with Booker and Samara in New Hampshire, but Samara had lazily batted Booker off with a grunt before he carefully wobbled off to gently deposit the spider in the nearest houseplant in just his boxers and a t-shirt with one hand cupped under his closed eye. That leggy little devil had been gigantic on top of being a complete surprise, and Samara actually had gone out of his way to soothingly hum to it when some of its legs had gotten tangled up in his eyelashes.

Yes, Samara was a very dangerous man indeed.

Drew was slightly less likely to spend a solid fifteen minutes making sure that slugs got safely across hot sidewalks than Samara, but his huge heart pretty much bled love all the same even when he was patiently looking over one of their pond’s massive bullfrogs on Samara’s worried insistence that one of them was holding one of its back legs at a odd angle.

Kids were more of his specialty, though, even if he and Samara showed no interest in producing or adopting one of their own. It only took some time observing him around the youngest babies to the oldest teenagers to see that he genuinely liked them as a whole. He also had the nearly magical ability to effortlessly engage with them, and distract them if necessary with an amazingly wide conversational range to the point that he could almost make his youngest patients forget about the accident that had landed them in front of a top notch trauma surgeon to start with.

Andy had really thought that Nicky and Joe could have exploded from pride when they had caught sight of Drew crouching down in his friendliest looking scrubs so that he could earnestly show a six year old girl what a gentled down surgical routine looked like as he restuffed and repaired her well loved teddy bear during one of the hospital’s Teddy Bear Repair fundraisers when they had been waiting to take him to dinner after his shift.

So yes, Andy could see why Samara, Drew, and Quynh were such close friends, even if her envious heart was threatening to rise up into her throat and strangle her from seeing how deep their relationship ran. God, it wasn’t like she had even gotten any practice with dealing with her own romance induced jealousy over the last five hundred years.

“Andy?” She instantly jerked her head up and out of her hands as Quynh called her name, and she looked up to find Quynh watching her with a wide smile. “I’ve got to do some last minute holiday shopping and pick up my motorcycle from my house. You wanna come with me?”

“Yes.” Andy was on her feet before her mind could fully process Quynh’s offer, and she almost reeled back from an absurd, and frankly, way too immature for her fear that she might scare Quynh off by being too eager. Samara shot her an encouraging smile over his shoulder and jiggled one of his hands behind his back at her in a clear order to keep going with it. She would happily take all the advice that he wanted to offer her on how to win over a changed and unfamiliar Quynh. “I really, really do. I- ah…” Samara was making a repetitive and aggressive biting motion with his hidden finger tips, and Andy blankly stared at his hand in a building haze of panic while he abruptly moved his index finger and thumb into the shape of a ‘L’. Biting. ‘L’. What the fuck did that mean- Oh! “Lunch! Would you like to go to lunch with me, Quynh?”

Quynh’s smile flared into the delighted and still shockingly gorgeous grin that had successfully knocked Andy on her ass every single time that Quynh had shot that ecstatically happy look at her for the thousands of years that they had spent together. Samara flashed her a clearly proud thumbs up, and even Drew sent her a mildly approving expression just out of Quynh’s line of sight.

“I’d love to, Andy. Just remember that you can’t just tip our waiter in cowrie shells or cattle anymore, and we should be just fine.”

Quynh was teasing her again for the first time in centuries, AND she was smiling at her. Andy did her best to keep her own smile from getting too sappy, and happily failed at it as she tried to figure out if stealing and giving the moon to Drew and Samara would appropriately show them how much she appreciated them right now. Maybe a basketful of kittens would work, but it seemed an awful lot like low balling it.

“You might want to ease up on the day dreaming a little bit, Jefe.” Andy violently twitched as Drew suddenly whispered into her ear in his usual affectionate rasp, and she vigorously blinked for a few seconds as she realized that she had gotten so sucked into moonily staring at Quynh as she got permission to borrow Samara’s muscle car for their outing that she hadn’t noticed Drew coming up to her with Andy’s leather jacket and wallet in tow. There was a strong chance that Drew could still be angry at her, and she didn’t have her former immortality to fall back on if he ever decided to stop acting like a soft pawed pussy cat around her. He helpfully wedged her jacket under her arm for her before he gave her forearm a gentle squeeze. “I wouldn’t hurt you or the guys for anything in the world, Andy. It did make me very upset when you almost made Samara cry earlier, and I would appreciate it if you did your best to not do it again.”

Well, nobody could accuse Drew of not communicating his feelings clearly and concisely. Andy suspected therapy had been involved with the creation of that trait at some point or another, and she shiftly inhaled through her nose at the horrifically uncomfortable feeling of what she was going to do next as she turned to face Drew and his wounded eyes. It was just her luck that Joe’s massive puppy dog eyes were one of the physical traits that managed to extend all the way through centuries of his very extended family tree, even if Drew had apparently been born with a slightly modified version of them.

“I’m so very sorry that I said those things to you and Samara, and I wish that I hadn’t been idiotic enough to yell at you two or even think that you guys did those things. I’m a jealous, hypocritical and deeply insecure fool, and I’m envious of the relationship that you guys have with Quynh since I don’t think I’ll ever be good enough for her.”

Drew silently stared at her for a few horrifically long moments, and Andy could feel nerve induced sweat start to bead on her back before Drew bestowed her with a blindingly bright smile.

“You’re forgiven, Andy.” Andy sagged in relief from Drew’s mellow words, and she was a little horrified to feel a blush rising in her cheeks as Drew gave her a quick kiss on her cheek while his smile widened even further. Andy had experienced nearly everything that the world had to offer her over the years, and now a friendly little peck on her cheek was enough to make her blush? “So. Is it just me, or does honestly talking about your feelings with another person feel just as bad as shooting yourself in the foot with a nail gun?”

“It’s fucking awful, and I really feel do better now that I talked to you about it.” Drew’s smile impossibly brightened even further at the stream of words that Andy had just vomited up out of relief, and Andy went in for a hug while she still had the excuse of drowning in a whirlpool of emotions. Drew’s hugs were a bit pointier than Joe’s, but Andy found that she really didn’t mind it as Drew wiggled his lovely face into the space between Andy’s neck and shoulder while they held onto each other.

“Yeah, it’s terrible for almost everybody. Samara pretty much has to be paralyzed in a pool of his own sweat before he can really talk about his feelings or uncomfortable memories without wanting to gouge his eyes out with a spoon. I’m pretty sure that’s half the reason why he and Booker spend so much time working out together, but they do seem to be doing better together, though.”

“Yep.” Andy didn’t try to remove herself from the hug just yet. ”I’m glad they have each other. Do you have any tips on not making Samara cry?”

“Don’t show him Pixar movies. Or Requiem For A Dream. Actually, that counts for both the movie and the song.” Drew was rubbing a broad circle into the midpoint of Andy’s back with one of his hands, and Andy let herself lean into the weight of his hand a little bit. “Or Schindler’s List, but that’s a really painful subject for him to start with, and everybody cries at that movie.”

“Oh, they definitely do. Hell, I bet even houseplants are doing it when we’re not looking at them.”

Drew suddenly made a soft and slightly damp noise into her neck, and Andy figured that she could get away with sliding her fingers into the almost, but not quite stick straight hair at the nape of his neck in a somewhat uncertain attempt to give him a little more comfort. At least she wasn’t the only person who was having an extremely emotional day around here.

The sharp sound of a concerned canine whine broke them apart, and Andy gave the back of Drew’s neck a quick squeeze before he stepped away from her and swiped the back of his knuckles across his eyes with a smile that seemed just a little more faded than his earlier ones. Andy returned Drew’s watery smile just as Quynh came skidding around the corner of one of the mansion’s labyrinth-like hallways with a fifty pound white puff ball clutched in her arms. Andy heavily suspected that Liebling, in all of his supposed German Spitz glory, was not in fact an actual dog. He was the physical embodiment of joy, maybe, or an especially small animated cloud that had gotten confused on where he was supposed to be on a given day, and had instead decided to greet every human and house cat with a level of enthusiasm and giddiness like they had left him to go to war and was just now returning to him after being away for ten years.

He was a very good (supposed) dog. He also had an impressive catalogue of mastered tricks and skills banging around in his fuzzy little brain. Even Andy had shaken her head in amazement after watching him daintily weed the garden with Samara, fetch both Joe’s sketchbook and a pencil for him when Joe had been curled up in a miserable ball in the solarium, and happily do two complete backflips in a row for a promise of a thorough ear buffing and butt scratch from Booker in the span of one afternoon. He had also somehow managed to climb twenty feet up an ancient avocado tree in the backyard so that he could scream threats of a particularly gruesome death at a madly chattering squirrel that had been just out of his reach directly afterwards, but every dog Andy had ever seen tended to do that without the admittedly advanced climbing skills.

“Hey, guys. Are you- Fuck, hold still, Baby Boy, I’m checking, I’m checking-” A healthy blush was making Quynh’s cheeks flush pink as she struggled to hold onto the frantically squirming dog while he squealed at the top of his lungs, and Andy stopped breathing for a moment as she thought about how beautiful Quynh looked in that moment. “Are you two the ones who are feeling sad right now? I’ve already checked with Sebastien and Nicky, and Liebling is going to lose his damned mind if he doesn’t get to fix it soon.”

“Ah…” Andy looked to Drew for what the correct answer should be.

“Oh yeah, it’s Mope City over here. Unleash the Wagging, would you?”

“Thank fuck. Get them, babe.” Quynh dropped Liebling when his desperately paddling paws were only an inch or two away from the floor, and Andy only had a split second to stare at Quynh’s pleased smile before Liebling skittered across the slick wood floor of the hallway and nimbly launched himself up into Andy’s arms with a rather substantial bounce. Andy instinctively wrapped her hands under his backside as she caught him, and Liebling immediately nuzzled in under her chin with a whimper while the tip of his wagging tail gently slapped against her stomach.

Quynh’s eyes were filled with a nostalgic sadness despite her small smile, and Andy found herself mourning the loss of them as Quynh slipped on a pair of neon pink heart shaped sunglasses while Liebling did his best to cuddle the Sad away. “Liebling washed out just shy of being certified as a service dog for veterans with PTSD in Berlin before I got him. He was too distractible and loud for them, but his heart was in it, and well…” Quynh helplessly shrugged with a rueful smile. “I pretty much count as a veteran with mental health issues. He does try his best to help anybody who seems sad, though.”

“He’s a very good boy.”

The silence that was hanging between them after Andy’s quiet comment was broken as Drew tried to hide his wide smile and soft huff of laughter in his palm while he watched the two of them with a bright spark of amusement in his eyes.

“No, no, don’t let me distract you two.” Quynh’s right eyebrow arched sharply upwards, and Drew gave into the silent interrogation with a flap of his hand. “Sorry, but I just realized that you were literally staring at Andy with rose-tinted heart eyes. I didn’t even think that was possible outside of cartoons.”

Quynh’s smile immediately turned into a sharp toothed grin, and Andy felt her cheeks burn hotter from the bold wink that Quynh shot at her.

“Oh, I’ve always looked at Andromache with heart eyes. Mind you, I’m usually looking at a heart shaped part of her anatomy from behind when I’m doing it.”

Andy choked on her own spit at Quynh’s less than subtle hint of what she really thought Andy’s ass was shaped like, and she wondered when she had forgotten what a brazen flirt Quynh actually was.

\--

“Can people really figure out how old we actually are by carbon dating us?”

Even Andy could hear how nonsensical her sudden question was as she tried to fumble her way out of the not entirely uncomfortable conversational void that the two of them were in as Quynh jabbed at buttons in a seemingly unending quest to find the perfect song to drive to in their painfully slow trudge through the nearly gridlocked traffic. After all, Quynh had already covered most of the more important questions in Samara and Drew’s house in front of everybody else. 

How did she get out of the iron casket? Tenaciousness, luck, and the bitey efforts of some very determined great white sharks. How long had she been out? It would be three hundred and seventeen years in seven weeks time. Why had she never contacted them? One really big misunderstanding on Quynh’s end of things. Why had they only been dreaming of her in the casket? It could’ve been time, distance, the way that Quynh’s previous shattered mind had fixated on her time spent there for a solid century afterwards, or a combination of all three factors. How had she eventually gotten over it? Hard work, possibly her healing factor working over her brain afterwards, and just a fucking assload of self inflicted therapy, Sebastien. Maybe even three assloads worth of therapy. Or three and a half. Her mental health was still a work in progress.

Quynh leaned back from where she had been playing with the muscle car’s antiquated music system with a sharp frown.

“Why do you want to know-” Realization washed over her face, and Andy couldn’t help but smile back at her as Quynh dropped the back of her head against the driver’s side headrest with a loud bark of laughter. “Oh my God, was that the excuse that Drew had fed you guys about how he knew you guys were immortal? Samara had sent me a selfie that he had taken with Joe in Las Vegas and I told them about you guys after that.”

Andy sagged in relief.

“Well, it’s pretty impressive how fast Drew came up with that lie with Joe’s sword on his neck. Booker was also going to shoot him in the head, but I’m not sure what good it would’ve done to shoot him if Joe had already decapitated Drew.”

“It certainly wouldn’t have helped Sebastien and Joe any in the long run if they had.” Quynh’s voice was a low growl that was making Liebling’s ears stand even more at attention in the back seat, but she shook herself out of it a moment later as she stared at the bumper to bumper traffic in front of them. “Christ, I swear I used to know what normal relationships used to look like back in the day.”

Andy couldn’t quite summon up the nerve to rest her hand on Quynh’s knee, but she had just enough courage to get by and actually touch the back of Quynh’s nearest hand as she erratically tapped out a beat against the steering wheel.

“...Normal is subjective, my Love.”

Quynh’s hand abruptly stilled under her own, and Andy felt her heart start to hammer against the inside of her chest as Quynh’s dark eyes flickered over to watch her for a long moment or two.

“That’s a fair enough point, Andromache.” Quynh shifted her covered hand a little bit, and Andy held her breath as her fingertips got securely tucked into the spot between Quynh’s palm and the side of her calloused thumb. “Thank you for reminding me of that. Do you have any preference for where you want to go to lunch?”

“...No, not really.”

“Great. I’ll park in front of the Duck and Clover, and then we just have to run across a few blocks for groceries and the last couple of presents that I have to grab before we go to lunch.” Quynh lifted their joined hands up off of the wheel, and the soft kiss that Quynh delicately dropped on the back of Andy’s knuckles almost distracted her to the point of not fully registering Quynh’s next words. “You might have to grab your Religion Handle, Andy. Parking’s going to be a bit tricky.”

Andy didn’t really think her fizzing nerve endings was the reason behind her incomplete understanding of Quynh’s suggestion. The way that Quynh was carefully watching the oncoming traffic wasn’t really helping either.

“You want me to grab my wha- HOLY MOTHER OF NICKY’S FUCKING CHRIST!” Andy frantically scrabbled for the handle above her door as Quynh suddenly whipped them sideways through a horrifically small break in the oncoming traffic. They fish-tailed down the mercifully pedestrian free block that Quynh had brought them skidding into before she cranked the wheel hard to the side and neatly tucked them into an empty parking spot with a tortured scream of abused tires and the sound of her giddy laughter. “WHAT?”

Liebling cheerfully yipped from where he was cozily secured in the backseat with his specially modified seat belt that had the mark of Samara’s engineering all over it. Andy tried her best not to glare at the innocently amused dog as Quynh reached back to give him a reassuring ear rub while her laughter slowly started to die off. 

“Sorry, Andy, I just saw this parking spot at the last second and I had to grab it.” She wasn’t going to be charmed by the bright spark of mischief in Quynh’s dark eyes, and she- Fuck, okay, Andy was a little charmed by Quynh’s soft smile and softer hand squeeze. “Drew’s Mom always calls them Religion Handles because people are usually finding religion in a hurry when they’re grabbing for them. Well, that, and all of the swearing that’s usually going on at the same time.”

“You’re going to buy me the fattest cinnamon bun that the grocery store has to offer after all of that.”

“Of course.”

“And a really big latte if we come across one.”

“I’ll make it happen, my little Cinnamon Bunny.”

“Fuck you.”

“I guess we could do that in the lube or the produce section-” Quynh only looked more amused over the hand that Andy had clapped over her mouth. She was such a mouthy little brat. Andy wouldn’t have her any other way.

\--

Quynh would absolutely love to have one of Samara’s excessively thorough dossiers on her fellow immortals right now, which would hopefully be packed full of itty bitty details and suggestions about what Nicky would actually like for the Winter Holiday.

Really, things had been going pretty smoothly in the shopping department up to this point. She had already found appropriate presents for Sebastien, Joe, and Nile, and Andy hadn’t even raised an eyebrow when Quynh had tentatively settled on buying thirty pounds of lamb as a reasonable amount for the souvlaki that she was going to make as her contribution for the potluck that was going down the next day for Christmas. Samara already ate like three starving wolves on the best of days, and Quynh had no doubt that Sebastian and his fellow immortals were going to be just as bad or worse in the appetite department if any of them had been trying to keep up with Samara’s exercise regime. 

Besides, the lamb souvlaki would fit everybody’s dietary restrictions, it was just as delicious as the first time that she had carefully made it under the watchful eyes of Drew’s Mom, and Quynh was sure that Thea Al-Kaysani would approve of her using a rarely indulged in recipe for comforting herself and trying to tamp down the jittery nerves that had been frothing and foaming their way through her veins since she had tracked Nile down on that jet.

Jesus, she could probably sell viewing tickets for Andy and Thea’s inevitable meeting at Drew and Samara’s wedding. Quynh sighed into her hands after a thoughtful moment or two. She probably shouldn’t do that. There was a decent chance that Andy might develop a crush on the titanic and terrifyingly competent woman who could cheerfully spend months on a archaeology dig in the middle of a war zone or disperse advice on where to find a killer dress, where a person could hypothetically find a boat or helicopter that somebody was trying to get rid of in a hurry, or the best bakery in pretty much every city from Cairo to Vancouver.

The knot of nerves and uncertainty churning in Quynh’s throat and stomach wasn’t lessening any with the dread and worry that was already filling her with what she had to tell Andy, and by extension, the rest of her fellow immortals. 

She had a scrabbled together family and life now, and she wasn’t going to go off and dismantle sex trafficing rings, get hired to liberate hostages, get shot, or eat shitty convenience store food with her fellow immortals if Drew and Samara weren’t watching Quynh’s back for her in the same twenty foot radius as her.

They were also very supportive of her in her main bread-and-butter career, though it usually featured more home cooked food, sympathetic rubs for her cramped neck and back, and a more frequent smattering of orgasms on the occasions that the three of them felt like getting their acts and libidos together enough to fall into bed (or any vaguely supportive surface, but the feverishly fast and soundlessly bite muffled session that they had managed to squeak out together in a tucked away but frequently used room in the Terem Palace in Moscow was one of Quynh’s sexual highlights of the past year.)

That was another potencial hiccup in the road to figuring out the exact details of what her relationship with Andy was going to be, but that was definitely a problem for future Quynh.

“Which book do you think Nicky would like as a present?”

“Mmm.” Andy narrowed her eyes above the nibbled on lip of her coffee cup, and gave the bookstore’s surrounding shelves a look that was just as thoughtful as the one that Andy usually directed at battlefield plans. “I think he’d like something from that section on edible urban foraging.” A fond smile softened her face as it slowly spread across it. “He’s pretty good at it, but even Joe was begging him to go back to using actual coffee beans after Nicky spent a year making coffee out of just acorns.”

“That certainly sounds like Nicky. I’m glad that everything is still going well between him and Joe, but I do have to admit I was a little surprised to find out about their thing with Nile and Sebastian.”

“Well, I’m just taking it all as a sign that love can and will smack you in the face when you’re not expecting it.” Andy’s smile curled into a more playful expression as she took the books that Quynh wanted to buy out of her hands so that she could take a better look at the foraging books. “Definitely didn’t make it any easier to find them all a matching hand towel set, though. It took buying two different packages to finally put together their His and His and His and Her set.”

“You didn’t.” Andy smirked at Quynh’s awestruck statement, and she had to regretfully shake her head at missing her chance to buy that for them. “Man, they’re either going to love it or be so embarrassed that their heads will actually explode.”

“I’m just personally hoping that they don’t plan on expanding their relationship any further than just the four of them, because I don’t think that I’d have the patience to find a towel set for a bunch of Hims, a few Hers and…I don’t know, a Them? Do they usually include a gender neutral towel for that big a group?”

“You would probably have to get that one custom made, but I’m also pretty sure that no orgy would turn down extra towels if it really came down to it.” 

“Probably.” Quynh absentmindedly took Andy’s empty paper cup from her once she registered the way that Andy was in the middle of a fidgety juggling match of keeping her stained cup, the unpaid for books, her leather jacket and the outer crust remains of her cinnamon roll from touching each other. She was brought up short by Andy pinning the rest of her things under her arm with a separating layer of her jacket before she threaded her free fingers in with Quynh’s free hand. “Quynh?”

“Yeah?”

Andy’s eyes were so very green, and Quynh belatedly noticed that they didn’t have as much of that exhausted darkness that was usually lurking in the back of Samara’s cornflower blue eyes and was clearly visible once he got pinned down and couldn’t avoid sustained eye contact.

“You’re not leaving with us in March, are you?”

“...No, I’m not going with you guys. It’s not perfect, but I’ve got a life here, and we’re trying to do some good for the world on a regular basis.”

“Do those two usually do the same sort of work that we do?” There wasn’t any question about who Andy was referring to, and Quynh nodded while she steadied her grip on Andy’s hand as they started drifting towards one of the long line ups for the cash registers.

“Yeah. They don’t bounce back nearly as fast from being shot, though.” 

Most of the hard won happiness started sliding out of Andy’s eyes.

“The guys are going to be heart broken when Samara and Drew die.” Andy sighed quietly as she started to slowly rub the tip of her thumb against Quynh’s palm. “But I think that Booker’s going to actually lose his mind when Samara finally kicks the bucket.”

Quynh grimly nodded at Andy’s assessment, and let herself stew in the thoughts of what it was going to feel like when she would eventually have to fight to get Drew and Samara buried together in the same cemetery before she tried to lighten the mood a little bit.

“He probably will. On the up side, Drew’s family has a pretty solid history of having long life spans.”

“They do?”

“Oh yeah, there’s this one guy who’s barely her cousin that living to over a thousand years old. He’s really aging like a boss, too. Not even a wrinkle-” Quynh twisted away from Andy’s vengefully pinching fingers with a giggle. “Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t help myself.”

“Smart ass. Do you want to-” The sound of Liebling’s shrieking barks immediately sent their attention to the large windows at the front of the store and where they had securely tied his leash to a sturdy pole with a nearby bowl of water. Liebling was a frantic whirlwind of white fluff as he giddily licked the face of the unseen person that he had pinned under his diminutive paws. “I see that you sprung for the really vicious therapy dog. Do you think that he’s knocked a little kid down?”

“Oh no, he just keels over for belly rubs around children. Total pushover for them. I should still go get him off of whoever that is-”

“Let me up, y’wee furry bugger!” Quynh knew that Irish accented giggle, and she knew the stocky black haired man who was wrapped up in a dark green leather jacket and more blotchy freckles than she could count. Quynh settled back onto her heels with a grin as she watched Kieran halfheartedly try to sound like a stern man who wasn’t delighted by getting an ecstatic spit bath from a creature that had made him go all wobbly eyed the first time that Quynh had introduced them. His next words were a little harder to make out over the short distance between the two of them, but they only made her smile widen even more. “Fine, fine, you’re the best pretty boy that ever existed, yes you are. Now, are you still being puppy sat, or is your Mum back in town-” Quynh waved at him through the window, and beamed back at Kieran as he stood up and excitedly jiggled his armload of Liebling at her. “Quynh! What’ve you been up to, my darling little duckie?”

“Did he really just call you a duck?”

“Yes, yes, he did. He got my approval about it first, though- Oh shit, that’s right, you probably haven’t met him yet. His name is Kieran, and he owns that bar that I was telling you about earlier. He’s also dating Antonio and Scott.”

“Ahh…” Andy’s face contorted into the same facial expression that she had been using as an attempted cover up of her inability to remember a certain person for thousands of years. “Yep. Antonio and Scott. Great guys.”

“You probably haven’t met them either, Andy. They’re nice, though. They work for Samara and Drew’s private security company with me.”

“Maybe. I’m pretty sure I met Scott at the Port when he piloted the helicopter for us, though. Big Asian guy with a beard and a purple flower tattooed on his neck?”

“That’s the one.”

Andy looked immensely pleased with her bare bone physical description of one of the sweetest men that Quynh had ever met. He also had a nearly bottomless well of patience in the face of the bullshit they had to deal with from their more demanding clients, the willingness and skills to come over and help a desperate friend out with an emergency plumbing issue at two in the morning, and the ability to happily swoon about Antonio and Kieran’s many virtues without getting distracted from the fire fight that he was in the middle of.

“He was nice. So...you said that all three of them are dating?” Quynh nodded at Andy’s somewhat hesitant question as she accepted her bag of books from the tired looking cashier. “Is there something in the water around here that naturally nudges people towards polyamory?”

“Maybe. It sorta sounds like it might have gotten to you already.” Quynh elaborated a little as Andy gave her a quizzical frown. “You did make that orgy suggestion earlier.” Andy sputtered as she turned bright red, and Quynh took the liberty of wrapping her arm around Andy’s waist while she marched with her to the bookstore’s front door. “Getting everybody in on it sounded fun. Crowded, and possibly bed breaking, but fun. Come on, I wanna introduce you to Kieran.” 

“Okay.” Andy visibly gathered herself for a moment, and Quynh grinned at her still flustered expression. “We’re not inviting him or his boyfriends to any hypothetical orgies, though.”

“That’s my girl.”

Andy’s blush darkened even more, and Quynh dreamily sighed on the inside so that Andy was slightly less likely to hear her. Gods, she had missed Andromache.

\--

“I don’t suppose that your prop Freddie Kruegar knife gloves would be any easier on my wrist than your chef knives?”

Andy sounded slightly more woebegotten than usual, and Quynh blinked and looked up from where she had been trudging her own way through microplaning a small hill of whole garlic cloves for the chunks of lamb meat that Andy had been helpfully hacking her way through for the last hour and a half. Each cube of meat was perfectly symmetrical and identical in size, but carving up thirty pounds of boneless lamb shoulder meat was nothing to sneeze at, even for Andy’s impressively sculpted arms.

Quynh sympathetically winced at how much Andy’s hands must’ve been aching at that point.

“I’m afraid not. Look, it’s okay if you want to take a break. You know, make yourself a snack and curl up on the couch with a movie.” Quynh carefully inhaled in an attempt to keep a blush from rising any further up her cheeks as she stared at the soup bowl of garlic. “I’ve worked in the special effects departments for most of the dvds in the living room. Mostly the horror movies, but I’ve done a few sci-fi ones over the years.”

“I would’ve paid closer attention to those movies if I had’ve known that you’ve worked in most of them since nineteen sixty-nine.” Quynh looked up from her flustered enjoyment of Andy’s words when Andy abruptly cut herself off from what she was going to say next with a funky little squeaky noise. Everywhere from Andy’s hairline to what Quynh could see of her chest was turning a bright scarlet, and Quynh mentally back tracked over what Andy had just said in search of what was making the former goddess look like a especially timid nun in a brothel.

What was- Ah. Sixty-nine. That would do it.

“Are you having fun over there with your naughty little thoughts about the year that I started my cinematic career in, young lady?”

Oh, Andy looked like she was actually going to melt into the floor. Very fun. The fact that Andy was just out of hip bumping range from her was decidedly less so.

“A little bit. I think my brain is still trying to unscramble itself after watching you eat that burger at lunch.”

Quynh suffered through her own burning blush at Andy’s somewhat daring comeback. She had been craving a burger since she had left Fiji, and Kieran and his bar firmly believed in doing the small food menu right, but she hadn’t actually- Okay, even she could admit that she had been moaning a little bit more than she strictly needed to when she had finally wrapped her hands and mouth about that cheese encased burger with its perky little bun and pleasantly fat stack of lettuce and tomato.

“Sorry about that.”

“Baby, it’s been five hundred years since the last time that I had seen you. I’m pretty sure that you could be reading travel pamphlets to me in a burlap sack and my mind would still end up in the gutter.” Quynh figured it would be wiser to not bring up the fact that Andy had been just like that five hundred years ago, even without the pamphlets or the sack . Andy suddenly frowned slightly at one of the kitchen shelves that was just above Quynh on her other side. “I’m not going to argue with the handed down wisdom that came with your lamb souvlaki recipe, but wouldn’t it be easier for you to deal with the herbs and everything with that mortar and pestle up there?”

Andy had finally noticed the one thing that Quynh had been hoping that she wouldn’t notice.

Fuck.

“Would you believe me if I said that I’m not using it as a point of pride?”

“I might’ve, if you hadn’t just phrased it like that.” Andy’s soft smile was getting a little wider in its thoughtful interest, and Quynh squirmed as her insides threatened to melt like so many marshmallows under the force of Andy watching her like that. “Why are you really using the tiniest grater in all of known existence, Quynh?”

“...I wanted to spend more time with you. You know, just you, me, and the individual rosemary leaves that I was going to mince one at a time.” 

Andy’s eyes and smile went even softer with the new information.

“You sweet thing. Do you want to try and convince me that you have to pulverise the leaves first before you have to mince them?”

Goo. She was absolutely turning into goo.

“No, but I wouldn’t mind kissing you if you wanted to.”

Andy’s eyes brightened even more, and Quynh’s breath caught in her throat at the sheer joy that Andy’s gaze was bathing her in before her eyes dimmed and she turned back to where she was slicing her way through yet another lamb shoulder.

“That would be nice, but- Look, Quynh, I- I really hoped that I wouldn’t have to tell you like this, but I- I lost my immortality almost a year ago.”

Oh. Was that really everything that Andy was all knotted up about?

“Well, yeah, your immortality blipped out a little before and after Sebastien shot you, but you’re fine now.”

“Wha- Fuck!” Andy’s scrambled together first and last words came out in a startled hiss of pain, and Quynh immediately whipped her head in Andy’s direction only to find Andy clutching one of her hands as blood sluiced away from the large cut that was stretched across the back of her hand. She had already jerked away from the cutting board and the knife that had caused the injury, and Quynh bustled her over to the kitchen sink even as her heart lodged in her throat. She had been dreaming through Andy’s eyes, so Andromache was going to be fine. She had to be.

“Yes, I know about that, and the whole mess with Sebastien and Merrick. I dreamed about it. Here, just stick your hand under this-” Andy obligingly stuck her blood slicked hand into the stream of room temperature water without looking away from her with those big, disbelieving green eyes or another hiss of pain.

Water in an open wound should hurt. Plenty of things in open wounds hurt, and Quynh had plenty of heart breaking experience with Drew and Samara demonstrating that through Drew’s hoarse howls when the burn ward nurses had gently swapped out the stained dressings on his burnt raw skin, or Samara’s silent screams when Quynh had to flush his pus filled shrapnel wounds out with saline as bombs dropped around them.

Andy didn’t sound like she was in pain.

“You’ve been seeing things through my eyes?”

Quynh wasn’t brave enough to swipe her thumb across the back of Andy’s hand for fear of making the possibly lingering injury worse, but she met Andy’s wide eyes instead.

“I slept a little on the flight back from Fiji, and you were helping Samara with the laundry and arguing about whether it’s possible to steam clean a velvet suit.” Quynh shakily exhaled as she turned the tap off. It was time to know if Andy was immortal or not. “You can steam clean velvet, by the way.”

Andy made a vague sound of absentminded disgruntlement as she pulled her hand back into a better angle of dimming sunlight while they both stared at it. Quynh couldn’t really see the cut, but she still waited to see if Andy’s blood was going to start welling up again.

A few more agonizingly long seconds passed, and Quynh finally started breathing again as the concrete evidence of Andy’s unblemished and completely healed hand settled between the two of them.

Quynh’s next breath came out on an almost sobbed giggle of relief.

“Andy. Oh my god, Andromache, you’re fine. You’re going to be okay.” Andy wasn’t really going to leave them after all.

“I am.” Andy’s eyes were nearly glowing as she looked up from her hand, and Quynh breathlessly grinned at her as Andy cupped Quynh’s face between her trembling hands. “Can I kiss you?”

“Yes. Come on, Andromache, I need you-”

Kissing Andy felt like finally coming home, even if it had been centuries since she had been trapped in the bottom of the ocean. She blissfully melted into the kiss with Andy, and was faintly aware of Andy’s shakily caressing hands as she tried to hold her lost love like nothing would pull them apart again. Andy still tasted a little bit like cinnamon and the dark beer that she had with her lunch, and Quynh encouragingly wound her fingers into Andy’s short sleek hair while she tried to keep her mind off of how it felt similar to Drew’s slightly wavier hair as Andy’s hands clutched at her back. She couldn’t help but grin as Andy’s lips curled into a smile without breaking their kiss.

Samara did that too. It wasn’t like the romantic relationship that Quynh had with Drew and Samara was a constant thing, and was instead friendly and platonic more often than not, but Samara tended to smile with every kiss he gave her and it happened whether he was sweat soaked, panting and gloriously naked underneath her, or if he was handing out proud little pecks to her when she got over a creative rut.

Quynh felt her heart warm under the cozy weight of a sudden realization while she did her best to conquer Andy’s mouth with her moaned approval. 

The length of her friendship with Drew and Samara was pitifully short when it was compared to the length of her ancient lifespan, but they were unknowingly doing important work during all of the brazingly spitting in Death’s eyes and teasing that seemed to make up a fair part of their mortal lives.

They had shown Quynh that she was still capable of being loved, and loving somebody else. That some mortals were worthy of being trusted. That Quynh had a widely sprawling family as long as Drew and Samara still drew breath. That she didn’t have to be useful or act like anybody else to be loved or wanted. That she could still form attachments with people who wouldn’t survive past a few more decades. They had kept her endlessly beating heart warm and capable of love.

Quynh let a shuddering sigh out into Andy’s mouth, and soundlessly clung onto her for a few joy filled minutes.

Liebling’s poorly thought out ploy to steal some of the abandoned garlic finally broke them apart (Quynh would’ve understood it if he had made a dive for the lamb instead, but her dear sweet dumbass of a dog had wanted the forbidden aromatic vegetable that was really bad for him instead.)

Quynh shooed him out of the kitchen with a handful of his now stale dog kibble, and basked a little around the smug bubble of pleasure that was filling her chest as she checked out Andy’s rumpled hair and clothes, which both looked slightly less debauched than her kiss swollen lips or the rosy blush in her cheeks. Damn, she was good. Quynh suspected that she had slightly more recent experience with those sorts of activities than Andy, but she was still surprised by the next words that came out of Andy’s mouth.

“I don’t think that we should tell anybody that I’m immortal again.”

“And why would we do that?” Andy was frowning down at her hands as she visibly thought up a carefully worded answer for Quynh’s question, and she really hoped that it was going to be a sensible one.

“I don’t want to break their hearts again if this turns out to be temporary.”

It wasn’t sensible. Sensible would’ve been holding it back so that she could get a leg up over an enemy, or feeling out Drew, Samara, or Sebastien’s mettle or worthiness of being let in on such vital information. It was a soft reason instead, and Quynh didn’t have the heart or energy to convince Andy of the other path of telling them everything.

“That seems like a really stupid idea that’s going to eventually turn around and bite you on the tit, Andy.”

She still had enough borrowed chutzpah from Samara to call Andy an idiot, though.

“I know. But I-” Andy haplessly shrugged as she scrubbed one of her hands across the back of her neck. “I can’t make them go through that again.” She glanced back up from her examination of her own sock clad toes. “Drew and Samara have been good for you. I don’t know exactly what you guys have going on together, but I’m glad that the three of you are there for each other.”

“You can have a part of me too, Andy. They’re good people. Pretty damn decent at kissing, too, but you need to either spend some time with them or have some shared near death experiences if you ever plan on taking a swing at that.”

Andy’s smile quirked sideways as she diligently got rid of any lamb that she might’ve bled on before she dumped her cutting board and knife off to the side for washing.

“I don’t think that I could get away with that, Quynh. Besides, I’m pretty sure that I’d be robbing the womb, let alone the crib if I tried to kiss them with the age difference between me and them.”

“Yeah, you really seemed worried about our big age difference when we first got together-” Quynh squealed with laughter as Andy vengefully flicked water at her. They were good. It might’ve taken far longer than either of them had wanted it to, but they were good.

\--

“God, I can’t believe that we actually got all of that lamb cut up and on skewers.”

Quynh groaned in agreement as she wiggled her face a little deeper into Andy’s shoulder, which was surprisingly comfortable for how much it was packed with streamlined muscle. Any possible discomfort probably would’ve been offset by the absurdly plush couch that Quynh had paid through the nose for, but the feathery poof of a throw pillow that Andy was jamming between the boniest part of her shoulder and Quynh’s head was still a considerate touch.

“I know. Sorry about that, but I always forget how long it takes to make a batch big enough for a group, and that poor butcher just looked like she was going to have a breakdown if I asked her to cube all of that.”

“She probably would’ve had a breakdown alone from that line up that was behind us.” Andy gustily sighed her answer from underneath her with every possible sign of enjoyment. “I really thought she was going to faint when you handed her that tip, though.”

Quynh shrugged a little as she nuzzled in closer to Andy with a wary eye on where her hair was going as it pooled next to Andy’s neck. Long hair was all well and cute during a bit of cuddling, but ending up with an unwanted mouthful of it was not.

“I like to spread the wealth around when I can.”

Andy peacefully hummed in agreement, and Quynh did her best to relax as Andy wrapped her arm a little tighter around Quynh’s waist with an affectionate tug. It was nice. Quynh heavily suspected that bringing up the formless area that their immortal souls apparently resided in would probably pop their happy bubble in a hurry. The announcement of the eventual arrival of a twin set of immortals was slightly less likely to ruin the moment, but the unnerving speed increase in how fast immortals were being produced was just one of the issues that was making Quynh’s guts twist themselves into an unhappy knot.

The unaccounted for immortal was the big problem, though. How would that even go?

Hey, Andy, do you remember Lykon as well as I do? You know, that beautiful, sweet man who became an immortal at an even younger age than Nile? Our lover for all of the short time period that we got to spend with him? I know that we both threatened to suffocate him more than once for the bouncy little songs he used to sing on the mornings when we both had hangovers, but I loved him despite all of that. I think he would’ve loved the future. I also think that he would’ve loved learning dances from TikTok, modern Japanese food and teasing Sebastien and Nicky into better moods. 

The guy who probably would’ve got on famously with our fellow immortals if he had gotten a chance to.

Well, I think we might’ve fucked up somehow, because I think he’s howling in absolute misery somewhere in his afterlife.

We probably couldn’t fix that even if we tried.

No, she couldn’t tell Andy all of that when everybody was so happy and alive.

Quynh only got to ooze all of her heartbreak and despair into Andy’s neck for a few short moments before Liebling wedged his cold wet nose against the back of her head with a worried whuffling noise. 

She smothered her grin and her watery little giggle into Andy’s collarbone.

“Good boy, Liebling. I’m okay, I promise.”

His disgustingly wet and somehow disbelieving snort against the back of her head sent Andy directly into a full throated snickering fit. Well, she couldn’t let Andromache get away with that blatant show of disrespect, even though Quynh’s indignant straddling of her waist didn’t make Andy look sheepish in the slightest as Liebling flounced back to his dog bed.

“Thank you for backing me up with the dog, young lady.”

“S-Sorry, I couldn’t help it. He just snotted everywhere!” 

Andy dissolved into another giggling fit as she hid her reddening face behind her hands, and Quynh was just starting to wonder if she could blow raspberries on Andy’s tummy without getting accidently poked by a knife holster when Andy finally pulled herself together with a few breathless snorts.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m good, I swear.”

Liebling sneezed from the comfort of his second best dog bed, which was lined with everything from old throw blankets, a stripped down Ghillie suit that Drew had donated to the cause of Liebling’s comfort, an accidentally shrunken wool sweater from Samara, and the first teddy bear that Quynh had bought for Liebling when she had brought him home from Germany for the first time. 

Andy pursed her lips in a clear attempt to keep herself from laughing at the latest of weird noises that Liebling could make with his nose, and Quynh tipped Andy’s chin up with her finger for another lazy kiss before she took a reluctant step towards getting their act on the road.

“We should probably get Samara’s car back to him.” Andy’s soft smile immediately transformed into an exaggerated pout, and Quynh gave the tip of her nose a quick kiss instead of the affectionate flick that she also wanted to give it. “Oh come on, you get to drive his fancy muscle car AND check me out when I’m driving my motorcycle back to their place.”

“I could drive your bike back for you?”

“They’ll be building snowmen in Hell before I willingly let you drive my bike, Babe.” Andy actually squawked at that, and Quynh gave into her original nose flicking impulse. “I can only assume that you ride a motorcycle like you used to ride your horses, and we both know that Batty only put up with your bullshit because he loved you.”

“Batbayar also loved me because I picked up his horse shit. God, he was such a good horse.”

Quynh nodded in agreement as she fondly patted Andy’s cheek.

“He was an excellent horse. Still doesn’t mean that I’m going to let you anywhere near my bike, though.”

“Damn it.”

Only the sound of her phone ringing with a call from Samara managed to distract Quynh from fondly staring down at the somewhat ridiculous Horse Girl that she had decided to spend several lifetimes with. Ooh, Andy in a Pony Girl bondage set up was a fun image- Quynh vigorously shook her head as she reached for her phone and accepted Samara’s call. She couldn’t get distracted again. Besides, Andy seemed like she would be the person with a riding crop and one of those prim little English hunting outfits in that sort of scenario.

“Samara?”

“Hi Quynh! How’s everything going on your end of things?” Samara’s entire greeting and initial jab at small talk was delivered in the slightly breathless but cheerful tone he really only got after he had been laughing for quite a while. Good. It looked like he had a decent chance this year of not slipping into the general malaise that sometimes t-boned him around the holidays.

“Excellent. Andy and I got the lamb souvlaki all set up for tomorrow.”

“Did you use Thea’s recipe?” Quynh hummed in confirmation, and Samara nearly moaned in response. “Oh God, I love that stuff. Do you want us to make some tzatziki to go with it tomorrow?”

“Sure.” There was a sudden bout of masculine and excessively giddy laughter in the background on Samara’s side of the phone call. Quynh would’ve never suspected Nicky and Joe of being able to reach that high a pitch, but she supposed giggling just did that to people. “What’s going on with you guys?”

“Ah. You know how Aello made those French court dresses for me and Drew so that we could wear them to that BDSM convention in Las Vegas a few months ago?”

“Sure.” Quynh also remembered the gigantic purple bruises that the arresting officers had left on Samara’s ribcage from that same incident, but she figured that it would be safer to not bring it up if Joe and Nicky were within hearing range. “Didn’t you just shove them in suitcases when you were schelping them back and forth?”

“Yep. Well, Joe knows about that too, and he opened his big old trap and blabbed about it to Aello when he found out that she was the person who made them.”

“Ouch.” Quynh sympathetically winced at the easily imagined confrontation. “Are Drew and Aello going to battle to the death in some bloody gladitoral competition?”

“They’re not doing that, shockingly enough. I think they might be saving that up for Easter or something. Anyway, they’ve settled on dragging the rest of us into joining them in a big gladiatorial chicken fighting tournament in the pool so that they can re-establish their honour or dominance or whatever the hell people fight with their siblings over. I’m also buying pizzas for snacks. Do you and Andy want in on it?”

“Is chicken fighting like cock fighting?” Andy looked more than a bit disturbed as she rubbed her hands up and down Quynh’s thighs. Quynh pulled her phone away from her head so that she could clarify the situation a little bit.

“It’s that game where people pair up and sit on each other’s shoulders in chest deep water while they try to push the other top person into the water.”

Andy instantly brightened up.

“So it’s like playing Water Polo?”

“Sorta, but there’s a little more staying in one place and blatantly aggressive drowning attempts. Should I count you guys in?” Samara sounded upsettingly cheerful about his rough outline of it as he explained it to Andy.

“Definitely. Andy can borrow one of my swimsuits-” Nicky’s faint background giggling went ominously silent. “Do you have eyes on Nicky, Samara?”

“No, not really. Why-” Samara abruptly cut himself off with a blood curdling shriek as the wet sound of a bursting water balloon overlapped with the suddenly renewed sound of Nicky’s cackling. “You vicious little motherfucker! Was the ice water really necessary, Nicky?!”

“You did say that you were feeling too warm just a little while ago, Samara.”

Samara’s deeply outraged squeal of indignation actually made Liebling’s already perky ears jiggle in place before the sounds of Samara’s first forays into physically cornering Nicky reached them.

“I’m going to put you in a chokehold, Nicky, and then I’m going to noogie you until you get a brand fucking new bald spot for a tonsure, AND I’M GOING TO DO IT WITH MY MOTHERFUCKING THIGHS!”

“Samara really does put in the effort to customize his threats, doesn’t he?”

“He does get pretty creative with them, Andy. Do you suppose Samara meant that he was going to choke Nicky out or noogie him with his legs?”

“It looks like he’s trying to do both of them at the same time. There’s a little more knee cap action on the noogieing front, though.” Joe sounded much more amused than Quynh had expected him to be as he answered them through Samara’s abandoned phone.

“I would’ve thought that you’d be defending your husband from Samara right now, Joe.”

“Nicky will be fine.” Nicky’s distant voice spiked into a high pitched yowl of Italian curse words. “I think Samara is shoving ice cubes down Nicky’s shirt. Or his socks, it’s a little hard to tell from here. Gotta go. Make sure that the two of you drive safely, will you?”

“See you soon, Joe.” Andy was wearing a mischievous smirk of her own as Quynh ended her phone call with Joe, and she squeezed her legs around Andy’s waist just to make her go almost cross eyed with lust. “What are you grinning at?”

“I’m just picturing what your face will look like when I beat you at chicken fighting, dearest.”

Quynh wolfishly grinned at Andy’s amusing naivety.

“I’m going to rain Armageddon and hell fire down on you in the teeniest tiniest strappy red bikini that I own, and you’re going to thank me for it afterwards, little girl.”

Andy actually made a small whimper of desire in the back of her throat while Quynh took the extra step of loosely pinning Andy’s wrists above her head as she loomed over her. God, Andy looked so beautiful when she looked like she was about to start begging. “Good girl. Do you want to pick your own swimsuit out, or do you want me to pick for you?”

Andy whined in the back of her throat again.

“I’ll make sure that you get a nice swimsuit, baby girl.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” Quynh flexed her legs again just to hear another one of Andy’s breathless whimpers. “You don’t get to see my bikini before the pool, though.”

Andy looked like she was about to cry. Neat.

\--

Samara was soaking wet and buffing his hands over his upper arms while he bounced from one foot to another in a desperate looking dance to keep warm on the small concrete parking lot outside of his and Drew’s gargantuan home gym when they finally pulled up and parked outside of it.

Quynh appreciatively checked him out from the privacy of her dark motorcycle helmet. Some uncharitable souls might’ve called it leering, but Samara probably would have told those same people to shut the hell up, he was fine with getting the look over every once in a while by people he liked.

There was a lot to look at. He might’ve had more surgical and injury related scars than Quynh could personally count on his skin, but there were plenty of bright freckles and small dark birthmarks scattered between them. His meticulously sculpted muscles, finely shaped bone structure and big blue eyes were all pretty nice to look at even in most of the traumatic or gore covered hellscapes that they landed in together with Drew.

The shivering wasn’t necessarily distracting her from Samara’s neon pink swim trunks or his off-white swim binder, which was actually the closest that they could come to matching his skin tone after an awful four hour long shopping trip for just that item alone. Quynh and Drew had turned Samara into a puddle of pleasure soaked goo directly afterwards just to take his mind of it.

Quynh pulled her helmet off with a bright grin.

“Hey, handsome. Do you want to come here and-”

Samara hastily threw himself inside his car with a yipped French swear word. Apparently that was a firm no for her half spoken offer to give him her leather and sheepskin jacket until they got inside. She could already hear Liebling’s excited squeals about the new arrival from the backseat as she swung herself off her bike, and Andy’s arched eyebrow and small smile could be seen through the windows as Samara obligingly snuggled himself in under her arm after a prompting tug from Andy’s hand.

The sound of Samara calling her name was a little muffled through the glass and metal, but the front seats of his car were just wide enough to uncomfortably fit three people if somebody wanted to be awkwardly poked by the gear stick. Well, he was obviously ready to put up with it if he really wanted to be squished between Quynh and Andy.

Andy and Samara were cheerfully grinning at her as she neatly swung herself into the empty spot that Samara had left next to himself while she pulled the thoroughly polished car door shut behind her.

“Hey you. You’re not worried about ruining the leather with your wet shorts?”

“Nah, I did a waterproofing treatment on them a while back.” Quynh smiled into the most prominent point of Samara’s shoulder as he tried to keep his still dripping hair away from her leather jacket while she cuddled into his side. “Sorry about that. God, I think my unmentionables were about to freeze off if I had stayed out there any longer.”

“Why were you out there, then?”

“I was getting the pizza orders in. The person that was taking my order couldn’t hear me over the yahoos in the pool, so I figured I may as well take the phone call out here.”

“Did you remember to get my favourite, Lapereau?”

Samara lit up with a sunny smile for the unprompted pet name that Andy had just spontaneously bestowed on him.

“Of course I did. Sauce, cheese, even more cheese, and sliced jalapenos for good measure. They did seem a little iffy on the last part though, so you might just have to raid the hot sauce collection in the fridge.”

“Thank you.” Andy’s voice was getting both softer and a little more serious as she spoke, and Quynh felt Samara’s breathing come to a brief stop as Andy locked eyes with him and held one of his hands with her own. “I really appreciate everything that you and Drew have been doing for us since we’ve gotten to L.A, and for everything that you’ve been taking care of before that.” Andy carefully exhaled as she tucked a lock of Samara’s wet hair behind his ear for him, and Quynh supportively nudged herself against Samara when Andy gently cupped the side of his face for him as his ability to blink went out the window. “Is it okay if I…?” She rested the pad of her thumb against the corner of Samara’s mouth in the exact spot that he hid his best smiles in as he shakily exhaled against her hand.

“Yes.” 

Samara met Andy halfway as she leaned in, and Quynh grinned around the pleased tears welling up in her eyes as Samara rested one of his hands on the side of Andy’s neck with the featherweight touch and relevance that Andy deserved. Quynh amended that thought slightly as Andy and Samara silently figured out which way their respective noses were supposed to be angled. Samara deserved to be handled like that too. They weren’t moving their lips much as they serenely rested against each other in a silent communion, but they both smiled against each other’s mouths as Andy gave the nape of Samara’s neck a grounding squeeze.

It was nice. Really, really nice.

Andy let Samara pull away from the kiss first, and he shakily huffed out her name in a low puff of air.

“Andromache.”

“Yeah.” Andy’s steadying grip softened even more while their matching smiles brightened again. “You’ve got nice taste in lip balm.”

“Thanks. Joe gave me some of his fancy organic stuff to make up for Nicky head-butting me in the mouth.”

“What did Nicky do to you?”

Sebastien’s horrified voice came from right in front of the car, and Quynh looked up to find him standing there with his hands braced on his own swimsuit clad hips while an enormous folded towel wobbled on top of his head.

“Merde.” Quynh promptly slid out of the car as Andy did the same on Samara’s other side, and Samara’s exasperated sigh followed her as she unclipped Liebling from his restraints in the back. “I’m fiiiiiine, it didn’t even hurt that much!”

“Suuure it didn’t.” Quynh was impressed by the sheer amount of sarcasm that Sebastien managed to pack into those three short words, but she was even more impressed by the gentleness in his hands and softening eyes as Samara obligingly shuffled over to him for a physical inspection. “Why did Nicky head-butt you?”

“We accidentally smashed our faces together when we were wrestling earlier. I’m pretty sure that I chipped one of his teeth with my fucking mandible, but he wouldn’t stop apologizing long enough for me to check on him.” Quynh caught a glimpse of Andy’s mostly concealed grin as Sebastien gently tipped Samara’s chin up with one of his knuckles so that he could squint at the shorter man’s possibly injured mouth. “Still not the shittiest surprise kiss I’ve ever had over all, so at least Nicky has that going for him.”

“What was your worst one?”

“It really depends on whether you think it’s too soon to make ‘Yo Momma’ jokes about your Maman or not.”

Sebastien’s smile was tiny and only there for a second or two, but he didn’t stop carefully touching Samara’s mouth.

“I’d appreciate it if you could keep a lid on joking about my Maman until I’m at least three hundred.”

“Yes, I’ll wait until I’m nearly eighty years old before I imply that your Maman was my worst kiss.” Samara may have missed it when he winked up at Sebastien, but Quynh saw the moment when a deeply engraved grief swallowed up Sebastien’s eyes at the reminder of Samara’s mortality. Samara definitely saw the slight wobble of Sebastien’s mouth and fingers, though, and Quynh busied herself with shooing Liebling and Andy through the gym’s front door as Samara softly spoke again while he and Sebastien embraced each other in a tight hug. “You’ll be okay, Sebastien. You’ll just have to remember that your family wants to be there for you.”

Sebastien’s bare shoulders were trembling as he made an inaudible sound into the top of Samara’s head.

“I know, Book, I know. I love you too.” Quynh could only see Samara’s hands rubbing up and down Sebastien’s back while he kept talking to him in a soothing tone. “The only thing I don’t know is why you thought you needed an entire towel to dry your hair with. Seriously, man, an asthmatic kitten could sneeze in the general direction of your head and your hair would be magically dry within seconds as a result.”

Sebastien chuckled weakly as he rubbed his cheek across the top of Samara’s head.

“You’re just jealous because you practically need to be standing in a wind tunnel before your hair will start to think about drying.”

“I’d fucking love to have a wind tunnel just to dry off in. Is that what you got me for tomorrow, or is that more of a birthday present type thing?” 

“Yes, I went ahead and built you an actual wind tunnel on the fifty dollar gift budget that you and Drew are enforcing with iron fists-”

Andy was waiting for her in one of the empty locker rooms with damp eyes and the sleek black one piece that Quynh had picked out for her after she purposely drifted out of eavesdropping distance from Sebastien and Samara. Their hug didn’t last as long as Samara and Sebastien’s, but Quynh thought it was just as potent. They pulled away from each other just as the sound of Samara and Sebastien’s continued conversation came drifting through the bleach scented hallways.

“Thanks. I really needed that.” Andy’s sniffle was almost masked by her hasty wipe of her eyes. Quynh figured that she could probably get away with stripping down to her bikini as Andy weakly gestured at Ozzy’s unmistakable disembodied titanium leg, which had been left in a perky pose on a towel draped bench. “God, Quynh, have you seen Ozzy’s leg? I can’t believe what people are inventing these days.”

“Tell me about it.” Quynh gave the ankle of the gleaming segmentated limb a careful but fond pat as she passed by it. “Samara spent ages trying to convince Ozzy to let him come up with a bullet proof alloy to make it with. She eventually managed to shut him down by threatening to hit him in the head with the first prototype.”

“They’re one hell of a family.” Samara and Sebastien were passing by the locker room door as Quynh and Andy slipped out of it, and she grinned at the wink that Samara flashed at them.

“They are, but it’s kinda a pity that the poor buggers are going to have to deal with me marrying into the family.” 

“Should I make sure that family counseling is one of the events during the lead up to the wedding?”

“Probably wouldn’t hurt, Book. Oh, Andy, do you want me to bottom for you in the pool for the first scrap?” Quynh giggled as Andy made a fizzling noise and turned scarlet at Samara’s innocent, if admittedly haphazardly worded question. “Trust me, Book might be tall and everything, but he’s got wibbly little chicken legs whenever somebody tries to trip him.”

“Fuck you, Samara.” Sebastien didn’t even sound that furred up about Samara’s little dig, but Samara scampered a little bit ahead of them with a bright grin anyway before he replied.

“You’ve already seen that particular floor show once today, Booker. Don’t get greedy.”

Sebastien turned almost exactly the same shade of red as Andy as Samara tried to do a sassy but limp swing of his soaked hair while he flounced off in a smugly satisfied bubble.

That bubble didn’t last for very long before Sebastien pulled the towel off of his own hair with a thoughtful tilt of his head, tightly twirled the towel in on itself, and pulled back on the far end with his other hand before he whipped the tip of it at the meatiest part of Samara’s perky right ass cheek with a shockingly loud cracking noise. His narrowed calculating eyes immediately softened as a broad grin blossomed across his face at the shocked squeak that he had just pulled out of Samara.

Samara’s blushing face was almost as red as Sebastien’s as he whipped his head around to glare at Sebastien, and Quynh quickly pulled Andy to the side of the hallway just outside of the doorless entryway to the pool while her fellow immortals and Drew and his family cheerfully waved and yelled at them from where they were happily bobbing in the water. Samara made a vehement snarling noise that promised very bad things for Sebastien as he dodged Samara’s initial lunge, and Samara repeated that warning noise in a much lower pitch as Sebastien started sprinting for the safety of the deep end of the pool with a gleeful cackle that got louder with every hasty step he took.

Quynh could’ve told him that while Drew was pretty much a cheetah in a foot race compared to either Quynh or Samara, Samara was typically the person who could chase down and tackle somebody like a motherfucking big cat out for blood. It was much more entertaining to silently stand by and watch Samara plow into him with a blood thirsty roar while Nile, Ozzy, Aello and Drew bellowed “FINISH HIM!” in unison as Samara and Sebastien crashed into the water.

Quynh followed Andy’s dive into the water as Samara and Sebastien surfaced with a matching set of maniacal cackles and a bright pink crescent mark on one of Sebastien’s earlobes, which Quynh suspected had been caused by a quick chomp from Samara. The rubber duckie that Nicky immediately hurled at Sebastien’s bitten ear seemed to be motivated solely by adding insult to Sebastien’s injury.

“That was a beautiful tackle, Samara. Ten out of ten, would watch you chase down Booker again.” Joe was showing off his breath taking grin to full advantage as he lazily barrow rolled his way towards them, and he seemed particularly pleased about the pastel pink colour of his swim shorts while he idly poked at Sebastien and Samara with the end of a pool noodle. “That snarl you made sounded just like the geese by the pond when I tried to sweet talk them earlier today, though.”

Samara was all wide blue eyes as he shamelessly used Sebastien as a broad shouldered and mildly protesting floatation device.

“Oh geez, Joe, were the geese really acting surly towards you today?” Nile’s giggle was particularly bright and mischievious as Samara sweetly talked to Joe like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. “Maybe you could try reciting some of Yeats’s poems to them next time? I always find that usually calms them right down.”

“Poems by W.B. Yeats. You’re sure about that?” A skeptical eyebrow was steadily inching its way up Joe’s forehead as he spoke.

Samara’s eyes were cheerfully malevolent slits as he peeked his head over Sebastien’s shoulder.

“No. Only a few of them actually like his poetry. The rest of ‘em will only be nice for Anna Akhmatova in the original Russian. Have fun trying to figure who’s who- OhmyGodJoe!”

Samara’s last couple of words came out in a giddy squeal as Joe tackled him off of Sebastien’s back with a playful roar. Everybody else seemed to take that as their cue to start rough housing again, and Quynh happily basked in the warm hearted chaos. God, it was good to be home again with her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Quynh joins Nicky in the Surprisingly Toppy Bastards Club!
> 
> Your lovely comments continue to make my giddy little heart go pitty pat like the happiest little miniature horse every single time I read them, so feel free to comment if you liked this!
> 
> The next chapter will be from Nile's POV.


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